
lass. 



i)()()K 



PliKSKNTI'l) BY 



ONE YOUNG SOLDIER 



One 
Young Soldier 

Formerly published as 

The Song of the Rappahannock 

By 
Ira Seymour Dodd 



8F 



New York 

Dodd, Mead and Company 

1918 






Copyright, 1897, 2898 

By the S. S. McClure Company 

Copyright. 1898 
By Dodd, Mead and Company 
{As " The Song of the Rappahannock ") 



^Ueb 1918 



AUG 14 1918 ' 



Contents 

Page 

The Song of the Rappahannock ... i 

The Making of a Regiment , . . . 39 
The Household of the Hundred Thou- 
sand 99 

A Little Battle 143 

One Young Soldier 165 

Sacrifice 202 



ONE YOUNG SOLDIER 



The Song 
of the Rappahannock 



THE Song has been silent for 
more than thirty years. In 
another thirty years it will cease to be 
a living memory save to a handful of 
very old men. But those who once 
heard can never forget its weird, fan- 
tastic, sinister tones. Sometimes it 
was a fearful yet persuasive whisper 
addressed to you personally ; again it 
would burst in uncontrolled passion 
into a chorus of awful and discordant 
screams mingled with thunderous and 
reverberating roar. With marvellous 
range of tone and expression it was, 
however, always one Song with one 
fateful burden. 



2 The Song of the 

I was a young soldier of the Army 
of the Potomac in those days ; one of 
the several thousand who wore the 
white cross of the Second Division of 
the Sixth Army Corps, and the Song 
in all its variations became a familiar 
sound. 

For instance, once when we were 
occupying the hills north of the Rap- 
pahannock, nearly half the regiment 
were on the sick list by reason of the 
bad water which supplied our camp. 
Down by the river bank, perhaps a 
mile and a half away was a spring 
of good clear water. '' Joe *' and my- 
self, both non-commissioned officers, 
thought we must at all hazards keep 
fit for duty, and on alternate mornings 
one of us would make the trip to fill 
our canteens. Wide and open fields 
lay between us and the spring and I 
think I never crossed that open space 
without hearing the Song. Preceding 



Rappahannock 3 

a distant detonation from beyond the 
river a faint quavering whistle would 
come, growing louder as with appar- 
ently increasing hurry it drew near. 
It seemed to speak in fascinating, 
insinuating tone of some very special 
message to you alone ; then suddenly, 
with venomous buzz in your very ear 
while your heart stood still it would 
speed by and die away again in the 
farther distance. It was the voice of 
a minie bullet from the rifle of some 
sharpshooter on the Confederate picket 
line. But the range was long, the risk 
slight, as such things went, and not to 
be compared, so Joe and I thought, to 
the very real danger of the camp water. 
Toward evening one of our field 
batteries would gallop down to the 
river bank and open fire upon those 
troublesome sharpshooters ; then the 
heavy guns on the other side would 
make reply and a new variation of the 



4 The Song of the 

Song would be heard — a very Wag- 
nerian orchestral effect : the quick 
crack of the field guns, the more dis- 
tant boom of the siege cannon, the 
scream of shells rushing hither and 
thither through the evening air, always 
with that rising and falling cadence, 
that mournful moan, that peculiar 
hurrying, threatening, almost speaking 
quaver which, once heard goes with 
you evermore, so that years afterwards 
you hear it in your dreams. 

Those big shells from the enemy's 
guns three miles away made regular 
evening visits to our camp. They 
seldom did any real harm. When 
we first occupied the position, a few 
tents were pitched too near the crest 
of the hill within sight of the gunners 
beyond ; but after one of those tents 
had been torn to rags and the head of 
a poor fellow standing near had been 
neatly shorn off, everything came down 



Rappahannock 5 

behind the slope out of view; and 
though we were always favoured with 
our vesper serenade and close calls 
were not uncommon, no one else, I 
think, was seriously hurt. 

The evening performance had, if not 
an appreciative, certainly a grimly criti- 
cal audience. A veteran in the ad- 
joining regiment calmly proceeds with 
the all-important business of boiling 
his coffee until a shell explodes un- 
comfortably close. Then you hear his 
disgusted growl : " The damned rascals ! 
They spoil my supper every night!" 
and the answering jeer of his comrades : 
" Jim, did you hear what that one said ? 
It said, ^ Which 'un, which *un, which 

y I f yy 

un, you ! 

The ring of the bursting shells was 
not the least impressive of the notes of 
the Song. It is hard to describe ; but 
strange as it may seem to say so it was 
certainly music, often with absolutely 



6 The Song of the 

sweet tones like the sudden stroke of 
a bell, followed by the singing hum, in 
curious harmony of the rushing of jagged 
iron fragments through the air. One 
of the friends of my boyhood was a 
musical genius, a pianist of no mean 
power who had studied his profession 
in Germany. The democratic make- 
up of our army is illustrated by the 
fact that, in the early sixties this man 
enlisted as a private soldier. And he 
used to amuse himself while lying in 
the trenches by noting the varying 
keys of the music of moaning and 
bursting shells. 

But the Song was not always harm- 
less or ineffectual. No one knows 
precisely how many men suffered 
wounds and death beside the banks 
of the pretty, placid Rappahannock. 
It is within bounds to put the number 
at fifty thousand. The war history of 
that region is peculiar. It is a tale of 



I 



Rappahannock 7 

incessant and resultless strife, seldom 
without at least the intermittent fire 
of opposing picket lines. Three of 
the greatest, most deadly, yet most in- 
decisive battles of the war were fought 
there. 

The veil of time has begun to fall 
over the actual agonies of the nation 
while the fury of that great war tem- 
pest lingered ; but some of us remem- 
ber how real it was, and the Song of 
the Rappahannock seems its very voice. 
It was Delphic in the ambiguity of its 
utterance. Neither the paean of victory 
nor the wail of the conquered, it was 
the breath of the Titanic struggle with 
its bitter pain, its dark suspense, its 
grim and terrible stress and strain. 

In early May, that sweet season when 
in Virginia springtime is just passing 
into summer, we came to the banks of 
the Rappahannock, ready to take our 
destined share in the battle of Chanced 



8 The Song of the 

lorsville. The river was no stranger : we 
had formed its intimate acquaintance in 
December during the bloody days of 
Fredericksburg ; and now, separated 
from the main body of the army 
which had crossed about fifteen miles 
above, we found ourselves once more 
facing the old battle-ground with its 
familiar sleepy town, its wide fields 
and amphitheatre of gentle hills spread ' 
out in portentous panorama before us. Ii 
Peace seemed to have settled down ^ ' 
upon the scene, blotting out all mem- 
ory of strife ; yet we knew the sem- 
blance was but a mocking phantasm, 
for our comrades of the First Corps 
stirred up a very hornet's nest of ene- 
mies and had a sharp brush before they 
could lay their pontoon bridge. And 
though with this exception the Song 
was ominously silent in our front, we 
could hear its distant voice from up the 
river. 



Rappahannock 9 

On one day it rose into an angry- 
roar, and immediately afterward the 
First Corps received marching orders, 
went filing past us along the river road 
toward the sound of the Song, and 
the Sixth was left alone. On Saturday 
night our time came. It was a lovely 
evening full of the breath of spring- 
time ; but our hearts were very solemn 
as, in the darkness and in sternly en- 
forced silence our lines crept across the 
pontoon bridge out into the fields full 
of the ghosts of December's awful sacri- 
fices and finally, with rifles loaded and 
with battle provision of sixty rounds 
of cartridge to every man, we halted 
before the spectral outlines of the 
Fredericksburg hills. 

Then in low tones the order passed 
from company to company : " Lie 
down where you are. Let every man 
keep his gun by his side. Do not 
take off any of your equipments; do 



I o The Song of the 

not even loosen your belts. Keep 
silence ! " 

A battery moves like a group of 
shadows out a little way to the front ; 
we can hear the subdued orders of the 
officers, the unlimbering and loading 
of the guns, and then all is quiet along 
the Rappahannock. Beyond the guns 
we know there are pickets whose duty 
it is to wake and watch ; but soon all 
along the inner lines the May moon 
shines peacefully on rows of sleeping 
men. By to-morrow night many of 
them will lie very quiet in another and 
a deeper sleep. 

Dawn comes soon in May, and the 
first gray light brought the Song. 
With hum and buzz like that of 
ghostly insects the bullets came steal- 
ing over from the enemy's skirmish 
line. It was a grim awakening and its 
first impression inexpressibly mourn- 
ful. Each singing bullet seemed to 



Rappahannock 1 1 

chant a dirge- — and the morning air 
held a very graveyard chill. Swearing 
is a common dialect with soldiers, but 
not an oath was heard as that morning 
Song began. Everyone was solemn ; 
we were thinking of home and of loved 
ones, and there was a great despairing 
sense of separation in our hearts. I 
think almost any man who has seen 
war would tell the same story and 
count those moments of the skirmish 
firing in the gray dawn on the brink 
of battle among the most gloomy of 
his life. 

But hark ! The batteries are open- 
ing fire, the Song is bursting into 
fuller voice ; and up and down the 
line orders ring out sharply, "Atten- 
tion, battalion ! " There is movement 
now, it brings life and dispels the 
gloom. There is marching and coun- 
termarching for better position and 
soon the line is placed in a sunken 



1 2 The Song of the 

road whose banks protect us against 
the enemy's shot and shell, while just 
behind, on slightly higher ground our 
own batteries fire over our heads. And 
so the morning passes ; the Song, never 
silent sometimes swells out clamor- 
ously ; and anon it sinks to intermit- 
tent growls. 

Suddenly, about noontime, there is 
a restless movement along the line ; 
staff officers are galloping furiously 
hither and thither; something is in 
the air. We are ordered to unsling 
our knapsacks and pile them to- 
gether. Meantime our batteries open a 
furious fire. The men say to each 
other, "The bulldogs are barking, 
and our turn is coming ! '* And as 
the Song swells with their baying, by 
quick orders our line is formed for the 
charge. We must storm those hills 
flaming with the fire of the Con- 
federate cannon. A few breathless 



Rappahannock 1 3 

moments that seem like hours, and 
suddenly our batteries cease fire, the 
expected order is given, and the line 
surges forward. 

I make no attempt to tell how the 
Sixth Corps on that Sunday morn- 
ing won the Fredericksburg heights, 
storming successfully though with fear- 
ful loss, the very same works from 
which the army had been beaten back 
in December. 

I am not a military critic, I can tell 
only what one very young and obscure 
soldier saw and felt. 

I was a Serjeant, and on that day my 
especial duty was that of " left general 
guide.'* The regiment was compara- 
tively new and raw, and in our rush 
across the rough ploughed fields under 
the sharp fire of the enemy's batteries 
we were thrown into some confusion. 
With great presence of mind our 
lieutenant-colonel halted us, ordered 



14 The Song of the 

the men to He down, and then called 
for "guides on a line/* That meant 
that I and the two other guides, one on 
the right and one in the centre, were to 
stand up and take position by which the 
regiment could align itself. I sprang 
to my feet, soon caught the line from 
the others, and there we stood while 
the regiment crawled up and " dressed " 
by us. It was a trying situation ; and 
the Song ! it was deafening. The air 
was full of wild shrieks of grape and 
shrapnel ; the ringing shells were burst- 
ing all about with maddening and stun- 
ning detonations. I remember, as I 
stood there for those few moments I 
seemed indeed to have lost all sense 
of fear, and yet I wondered whether 
I was actually myself and whether my 
head was really on or off my shoulders. 
Then, as we raced forward once more 
and neared the enemy's position, I re- 
member that at regular intervals bul- 



Rappahannock 1 5 

lets would strike close to my feet and 
throw stinging little showers of gravel 
in my face. I thought little of it at 
the time, but among the prisoners cap- 
tured were some sharpshooters who 
had been posted off at our left ; and 
when I heard how those fellows had 
bragged about the number of shots 
they had fired at individual officers in 
our regiment, then I understood. My 
place as guide had brought me into 
view, and one of those skirmishers had 
tried to pick me off but had each time 
made a little too much allowance for 
my running. 

When we neared the face of the hill 
against which our charge was directed 
the storm of fire first went harmlessly 
over our heads, then it ceased ; and 
stumbling through a thicket of brush 
and felled trees, we came suddenly 
upon a great, frowning earthwork. 
How its yellow sides loomed up ! 



1 6 The Song of the 

And just over its edge the muzzles 
of two great brass guns gaped at us ; 
but everything within was silent as 
death. The same thought flashed 
through every mind. "They are ly- 
ing low for us, and presently we shall 
look into the barrels of a row of rifles 
and receive their deadly volley at this 
short range ! " For an instant the 
regiment as one man recoiled and 
faltered. Then a serjeant from one 
of the centre companies stepped forth. 
I can see him now, a handsome, fair- 
haired young fellow. With cool and 
quiet voice he called, " Boys, let 's see 
what 's inside of this thing ! " and 
straight up the slope of the yellow 
mound he started and the regiment 
followed with a cheer. We found a 
deserted fort. It had been outflanked 
by the regiment on our right. They 
received from another side the volley 
which we narrowly missed and it laid 



Rappahannock 1 7 

low more than a hundred of their men. 
Away to our right, all along the line 
the charge had been successful and the 
heights of Fredericksburg were won. 

Is there any intoxication like the joy 
of victory ? For the moment men 
forget everything else : fatigue, thirst, 
wounds, dead and suffering comrades, 
the parting shots of fleeing foe. But 
it is a short-lived joy ; at least ours was, 
for the victory had been costly and 
there were sad gaps in the ranks of all 
the regiments as we reformed on the 
crest of the hills. Moreover, our work 
was but begun. The Sixth Corps had 
been ordered to join Hooker by cut- 
ting a road for itself through Lee's 
army. 

Regaining our knapsacks, we were 
speedily on the march, the First Divi- 
sion now in the advance, as ours, the 
Second, had been in the morning. 
Ghastly sights met us as we passed 



1 8 The Song of the 

through the old town where the Light 
Division had charged; almost every 
house showed marks of shot or shell, 
and here and there on the sidewalks or 
at street corners, in the hot sunshine 
lay the dead bodies of poor heroes 
whose last battle was fought. I re- 
member how almost always some com- 
rade's friendly hand had pulled the 
corner of a blanket over their swollen 
and blackening faces. On we went 
leaving the town behind, marching 
along a well-made high-road into a 
country of small fields set in the midst 
of dense and scrubby pine woods and 
the afternoon was wearing away when 
suddenly, from the direction in which 
we were going, out of those mysterious 
thickets of pine came the Song. 

This time there was no prelude of 
cracking rifles and whispering bullets ; 
but, as though some mighty hand smote 
at once all the bass notes of a great 



Rappahannock 1 9 

organ the cannonade roared out, swell- 
ing louder and louder all along our 
front. Soon we reached an open field 
where an ammunition train was parked 
and here we were halted to rest and 
replenish our cartridge boxes while the 
fierce roar of the Song still thundered 
until, as we were thus busied, there 
was a hush — one of those instant and 
ominous silences which smite the heart 
more loudly than any sound : the Song 
did not die away, it stopped. And then, 
after a breathless moment a new move- 
ment of the symphony began. Like 
the pattering roar of rain after thunder, 
or like the long roll from a hundred 
tenor drums it swept along and swelled 
out until the woods responsive seemed 
to vibrate to its rattle. It was the file- 
fire of the line of battle. We could see 
nothing, not even the smoke through 
the dense forest; we could only listen. 
"Hark!" said an old soldier standing 



20 The Song of the 

near me. " D' ye hear that ? Bullets 
this time: Them *s the little things that 
kills ! " 

But swiftly now we are on the march 
again, pressing toward the sound of the 
Song. And soon the wounded begin 
to appear, making their way past us 
toward the rear by the side paths of 
the road on which we march ; every 
moment their numbers increase until 
we find ourselves marching between 
two ghastly lines of wounded men : 
only a detachment from the growing 
company of the victims of the Song, 
only those who can walk. But there 
were gruesome sights in that procession 
of pain. Here a man holding up his 
hand across which a bullet has ploughed 
a bloody track ; there one with a ragged 
hole through his cheek ; then an offi- 
cer leaning on two other men, both 
wounded, the ashy hue of death on his 
face and the blood streaming from his 



Rappahannock 21 

breast. This is no picture of the im- 
agination. I am telling things that I 
saw, things that burned themselves into 
my memory; and I remember that 
every one of those wounded men 
whether his hurt were great or small, 
was pale as death and wore a fixed 
expression, not of terror but of stony 
despair. They all walked slowly and 
wearily and if you asked one of them, 
"How is the battle going?" you got 
the invariable answer, " Our regiment 
is all cut to pieces ; " and they said it in 
a tone of tired reproach as though you 
ought to know and had insulted them 
by asking, or else with an inflection 
which meant, " Presently you will catch 
it yourselves." It was a procession of 
spectres and cold cheer it furnished for 
us, hurrying forward toward the ever- 
nearing and now frightful tones of the 
Song ; yet I think the emotion upper- 
most in our minds was not precisely 



22 The Song of the 

fear but a sort of awful curiosity : 
we burned to see as well as hear the 
dreadful mystery beyond the pines ; the 
Song seemed to come from a deadly 
but luring siren whose call we must 
obey. 

But night was now coming fast and 
all the ways began to darken ; and just 
when we expected to emerge into the 
heart of battle, as though an invisible 
conductor had suddenly raised his wand, 
as abruptly as it began the Song ceased 
and there was a great silence. We had 
heard though we had not seen the fight 
at Salem Church, a bitterly contested 
but drawn battle in which many hun- 
dreds of brave men fell. The Sixth 
Corps had begun to feel the weight of 
Lee's army. 

The night which followed was one of 
those sweet nights of early summer 
when earth seems not to sleep, but to 
unloosen her bands and lie down to 



Rappahannock 23 

play with her merry brood of new-born 
children. Yet there was strange mys- 
tery abroad : everywhere a weird sound 
— was it of sorrow or of foreboding, 
nature's wail or nature's warning ? It 
seemed to mingle both as the May 
moon shone down on those who died 
to-day and those who were to die 
to-morrow. I have often heard the 
spirit-like cry of the whippoorwill, but 
never as I heard it that night. It came 
from every tree and bush, from every 
side and all around until it pervaded 
all the air. Perhaps I thought more 
of it because I was not one of the for- 
tunate ones who could sleep undis- 
turbed. The first serjeant was among 
the missing, the second serjeant had to 
take his duty and I was obliged to act 
as "commissary," rouse a detail of 
sleepy and unwilling men, stumble 
through the fields with them until we 
found the supply train and bring back 



24 The Song of the 

a load of rations for the company ; but 
I never hear a whippoorwill that I do 
not think of that night. 

In the morning we found a little 
brook near our lines ; it was a welcome 
friend; it offered us water for coffee 
and for a much-needed wash and its 
banks were speedily lined with chaffing, 
gossiping, half-dressed soldiers. But 
the coffee-pots had scarce begun to send 
their grateful fragrance through the lines 
when that monotonously awful Song 
broke forth again. From the hills in 
our rear which we had victoriously 
assaulted yesterday, came screaming 
shells from an enemy's battery. Our 
breakfast was cut short : " Fall in, 
men ! '* " Attention, battalion ! '* The 
orders flew from rank to rank, and soon 
the lines were formed. A pleasant Vir- 
ginia mansion stood on rising ground 
near by, and the pretty lawn in front 
offered a good position which was 



Rappahannock 25 

speedily taken by one of our batteries, 
the horses ruthlessly trampling down 
the flowers and shrubbery; and there 
before that peaceful home the war-dogs 
began their baying answer to the hostile 
shots. Meantime the regiments were in 
motion and as we crossed a field below 
the house its fleeing occupants went 
by us. I was near enough to see them 
closely : an intelligent-looking man 
with his fair, pale wife and two little 
children. They were friends of our 
foes, but every heart ached for them 
and we let them pass in respectful 
silence. I noticed that the man's face 
bore the same set, despairing expression 
that I had seen the day before in the 
faces of the wounded men. A new and 
horrid discord sounded in the Song as 
that sad little company went by. 

The firing soon ceased; but all the 
morning we marched and counter- 
marched taking up first one, then an- 



26 The Song of the 

other position, while now and then in 
the valleys below we caught glimpses 
of the brown ranks of the Confederates 
who seemed pouring in from all sides. 
The situation was evident even to us in 
the ranks. Hooker had abandoned the 
Sixth Corps and Lee was concentrating 
all his available force to crush us. Things 
looked desperate. I remember that Joe 
tried all day to keep the bearings of the 
river in mind, and proposed that, if worst 
came to worst we should, even under 
fire attempt to swim it rather than go to 
Andersonville. 

But the day passed quietly, all the 
afternoon we lay in a little field with 
woods on three sides, in apparent secur- 
ity and the men talked and joked and 
laughed as though battles were a far- 
off story. Thus time wore on, until 
toward evening a distant cannon shot 
sounded ; then another, and a spent 
shell came harmlessly over the tree- 



Rappahannock 27 

tops tumbling end over end to the 
ground ; and then, all at once, pande- 
monium seemed let loose. It was the 
Song in another of its wild and wonder- 
ful variations. As yesterday at Salem 
Church there was no prelude of skir- 
mish fire; but unlike yesterday's even- 
ing Song, this did not begin with the 
growl of the bulldogs. All instruments 
of wrath and war seemed taking part in 
it, and it came, not from our front alone 
but from the right, from the left, from 
the woods before us ; while out in the 
open space a battery of ours was savagely 
firing at an enemy we could not see. 
Quickly but quietly we formed in line. 
Even now I can see my dear comrade, 

Serjeant W , passing along the 

company front counting off the files 
in his grave, careful way. Then he 
took his place next the captain, and I 
saw him no more : he fell in the battle, 
a noble young Christian, with a wife 



28 The Song of the 

and child waiting for him in the far- 
away home to which he never returned. 

Presently our orders came, and 
we moved at double-quick past the 
wood out into a larger field which 
sloped gently toward a dry ditch and 
then rose in the same manner on the 
farther side. Coming over the opposite 
crest of the slope, in full view was a 
brigade of the enemy; another body 
of them was well up into the wood 
in front of the field we were leaving ; 
beside us now was our battery already 
mentioned: we could hear the captain 
shouting his orders for the timing of 
the shells in seconds and half-seconds. 
It was getting too hot for him : his 
horses were beginning to fall and to 
save his guns he was, as we passed 
him, calling out to his men to " limber 
up and be oif." 

Every incident of that scene is won- 
derfully vivid to me even to-day. I was 



Rappahannock 29 

conscious of none of "the frenzy of 
battle," but, instead, every sense seemed 
more than naturally quickened. I re- 
member that, as we entered the larger 
field and the panorama of war opened 
full before me and the Song roared its 
diapason I thought and said to myself, 
" How inexpressibly grand this is ! " 
And I noticed everything : the very 
colour of the ground and of the even- 
ing light and the brown ranks of the 
oncoming foe ; and a little tragedy that 
was being enacted at one side, which I 
always think of as illustrative of the 
sort of stuff which was to be found in 
that old Army of the Potomac and of 
the grit which makes the Anglo-Saxon 
the hardest of all men to conquer. A 
small regiment of veterans, either a 
Maine or a Wisconsin regiment — I 
never certainly knew which — was In 
that field, and as we came near they 
were being outflanked by the enemy 



3© The Song of the 

who were penetrating the woods at 
close range. Their position was un- 
tenable, they were suffering severely 
and the regulation move for them 
would have been to fall back; but 
instead they deliberately changed front 
and moved up nearer, wheeling slowly 
by battalion, not an easy manoeuvre 
even on the parade ground ; and they 
did it without ceasing or even slacken- 
ing their fire ; and all the while they 
had to close up the gaps left in their 
ranks by men who were dropping, 
dropping, dropping, to the savage fire 
of the foe. 

I suppose the commander of the 
division thought such raw troops as 
we, fit only for sacrifice. At any rate, 
we were rushed to the bottom of the 
field and posted in the ditch to check 
the onset of a Confederate brigade as 
best we might. It is needless to say 
that we suffered severely, or that we 



Rappahannock 3 1 

could hold our desperate position only 
for a little while. But our fire must 
have told, for the enemy swerved to 
the right as we opened on them ; yet 
they kept coming on and soon began 
to outflank us. 

The same strange intensity of per- 
ception with which I entered the field 
stayed with me and photographed its 
scenes upon my mind. I can see the 
man several files away, just too far for 
me to reach, who vexed me because in 
his excitement he would, every time 
he fired shoot before he aimed with 
his rifle pointed toward the sky ; and 

little S , a boy whom we were all 

fond of, shot through the body yet 
coolly walking oflF toward the rear say- 
ing, "Well, boys, I 'm hit ! " And I can 
hear our brave but eccentric lieutenant- 
colonel shouting : " Give it to them ! 
Give them Blissom ! " And I remem- 
ber that just above my head there seemed 



32 The Song of the 

to be a stratum of flying bullets so 
that in loading, every time I was about 
to raise my arm to ram down the 
charge I said to myself, " Here goes 
a bullet through this arm." And yet, 
at the same time I noticed the vicious 
snips with which the grass-blades all 
about were being cut. How any one 
escapes in close battle is a mystery; 
yet the killed and wounded are almost 
always a small minority. 

Strange to say, the companies on the 
left, which were most exposed held out 
longest and when, as was inevitable the 
regiment broke, many of their men and 
officers refused to run but retired fight- 
ing stubbornly. I remember how one 
captain, a fiery little man tried to hold 
his men together, how he implored and 
threatened and swore at them and drew 
his revolver upon them and at last, 
when it was no use flung himself down 
upon the ground and cried like a baby; 



Rappahannock 33 

and how another, a tall German whose 
company was next to ours held his 
men to their work nobly until they 
could be held no longer, and then with 
slow and moody steps walked up that 
deadly slope muttering oaths to him- 
self and switching off the grass-blades 
with his sword. Some veterans who 
saw him told me afterward that they 
expected every moment to see him 
drop. 

Our regiment was not the only broken 
one : the whole front line was apparently 
gone; the sudden savage charge of twice 
our number was sweeping everything 
before it. As the fragments of our 
company retired up the slope of the 
field, a few, of whom I happened to be 
one came to a slightly sunken road, 
a mere farm track, but in it lay the 
Sixth Regiment of the old Vermont 
Brigade. As they saw us they called 
out, " Rally on us, boys ! " and we 
3 



34 The Song of the 

gladly accepted the invitation. Several 
weeks before I had been on duty on 
the picket line : it was the reserve and 
we were allowed to kindle fires, and all 
night by the blazing logs I had talked 
to a young Vermonter, a plain Green 
Mountain farmer lad, and we had made 
a soldier's friendship. When I came 
to the sunken road the first man I 
saw in that prone line of men was my 
camp-fire friend. I called out to him 
and dropped by his side. Others of 
our men did likewise and we lengthened 
out their too short line by about a 
dozen files. 

It was apparently the last desperate 
hope of the corps. Our division com- 
mander, sitting on his horse and watch- 
ing us is reported to have said to one 
of his aides, " If that line breaks, we *re 
gone ! " 

We lay at full length on the ground, 
silent save for the exhortation of the 



Rappahannock 35 

officers : " Hold your fire, boys ! " 
" Keep quiet, there ! '* " Down with 
that rifle!" For we had reached the 
point where heed of consequences was 
gone and a cold recklessness had taken 
possession of us and it was hard to 
restrain the men. 

On came the Confederates, their 
" rebel yell " now sounding shrill and 
clear; and they were firing as they 
came with so deadly an aim that 
several of our officers who rose up 
slightly the better to control their 
men were hit and fell back dead or 
wounded. 

They crossed the ditch where our 
regiment had been and we could see 
each separate star and bar upon their 
red battle-flags and their slouch hats 
pulled down to shield their eyes from 
the setting sun, and then their very 
faces. I remember how I singled out 
one after another and admired certain big 



36 The Song of the 

brown beards as they swarmed up the 
slope straight toward us. 

They were almost on us — some of 
the men said, not ten feet away, but 
perhaps imagination shortened the dis- 
tance — when the Vermont colonel, 
who, as I remember wore a long, 
black rubber coat over his uniform 
and looked like a Methodist parson 
shouted out the command : " Rise ! 
Fire ! " 

Like spectres looming from the grave, 
the line of men stood up, and the Song 
shrieked out in one awful death-laden 
volley. The field before us was changed 
as though by some dire magic. A mo- 
ment before It had been filled with a 
yelling, charging host ; now it was sud- 
denly cleared. As though an October 
gust had swept across that May even- 
ing, away down to the bottom of the 
field and beyond the ground was strewn 
with brown, prostrate forms ; but they 



Rappahannock 37 

were not leaves, they were dead and 
wounded men ! 

The Httle Vermont regiment had re- 
pulsed and shattered a charging Louisi- 
ana brigade. We followed up our volley 
with a counter-charge, our own regiment 
meanwhile had rallied and joined us, 
and when we came to the ditch where 
we had at first been posted dead men 
lay across and within it, and from their 
midst living men who had sought 
refuge from our fire arose, waving 
their hands in token of surrender: 
among these the colonel commanding 
the Confederate brigade. 

As he stood up a big, impetuous 
Scotch-Irishman confronted him with his 
bayonet, and the savage exclamation : 

" Give me yer soord or I '11 r-run ye 
through ! " 

The colonel was a stately Southern 
gentleman whose soldierly spirit was 
unbroken by misfortune. 



38 The Song of the 

" No ! " he sternly replied, looking 
disdainfully at the levelled steel. " I 
yield my sword to no private. Show 
me a commissioned officer ! " 

It is hard to say how it might have 
ended, for Hodge was a dour man ; 
but our lieutenant-colonel was for- 
tunately close at hand. He ordered 
the soldier away and received the 
officer's surrender in a manner worthy 
of them both. 

The setting sun was throwing its 
parting gleam across that awful little 
field, the Song had sobbed itself into 
silence, the Sixth Corps was saved, and 
night's curtain fell upon the last scene 
in the drama of Chancellorsville. 



The 

Making of a Regiment 



THE process by which men were 
made soldiers in our late war was 
one of the most remarkable things in 
that phenomenal conflict. Men who 
had no taste for military life, no desire 
for martial glory, and none save the 
most rudimentary military training were 
enlisted, uniformed, organised into regi- 
ments, officered often with those as 
ignorant of war as themselves, equipped, 
armed, and sent into the field within 
a few months, or even a few weeks, 
after being mustered into service. And 
these raw regiments were speedily 
moulded into well-disciplined and efFep- 



40 The Making of a Regiment 

tive battalions, fit to be members of a 
famous army. 

All this is history more or less well 
known, but the way in which the result 
was accomplished is not so familiar, and 
perhaps the experience of one who was 
a member of one of these regiments 
may be worth telling. 

I remember — I was but a boy then 
— how, at the time of the news from 
Sumter and the Presidents first call for 
troops, the pastor of the village church 
spoke on a Sunday morning to a breath- 
less congregation and closed with the 
trumpet call, "Who will go to the 
war?'' 

Instantly in the gallery one man 
stood up. He was a veteran who had 
served in the regular army in Mexico. 
There were others, but I mention him 
because he was typical. Into the ear- 
liest formed regiments went the few like 
the soldier of Mexico who had seen 



The Making of a Regiment 41 

actual warfare, also the pick of the 
members of the city militia organisa- 
tions ; and into these first regiments 
went the enthusiasm of the nation's 
first burst of patriotism. Then, too, 
the delays of the first year of the war 
gave opportunity for drill and discipline 
of the regulation sort, often under offi- 
cers of West Point training. These 
oldest regiments were, therefore, the 
flower of the army, and in a peculiar 
way the model and foundation of it. 
But after Gettysburg — indeed, before 
that memorable battle — they had be- 
come terribly reduced in numbers, and 
actually formed but a fraction of the 
mighty host. 

The history of the later regiments 
was diflferent. Enthusiasm, though it 
did not die, cooled. Something else 
took its place, something more truly 
characteristic of the great crisis. I do 
not know how to give it a name. It 



42 The Making of a Regiment 

was a spirit that entered into the 
nation, a solemn and compelling im- 
pulse that seized upon men whether 
they would or no. Many attempted 
to resist, but successful resistance was 
blasting to peace of mind. The voice 
of this spirit asked insistently, " Why 
do you not go to the war ? " And 
it was not easy for an able-bodied man 
to prove his right to stay at home. It 
was in obedience to this impulse that 
men went into regiments formed during 
the year of 1862. The day for illusions 
was passing ; the grim character of the 
struggle was becoming too evident. 
" Going to the war " meant no possi- 
bility of holiday excursion, for the stress 
of the crisis hastened new regiments to 
the front with small delay ; the calls for 
troops were urgent, and they summoned 
to serious work. It was by one of these 
calls that we were mustered, and it was 
marvellous how quickly ten full compa- 



The Making of a Regiment 43 

nies were enlisted in the county. Local 
pride had its influence ; the county 
contained one large manufacturing town 
and several important villages. Town 
vied with country, and each village with 
every other, in completing its quota of 
men. There were other influences. 
"A draft*' was beginning to be talked 
of, and there were some who said, " I 
would rather volunteer now than be 
drafted a few months later.** Then, 
too, for the first time, a bounty was 
promised. It was small in comparison 
with the sums afterwards offered, but 
sufficient to turn the scale with waverers. 
And yet the chief impulse was that im- 
perious spirit of the hour which had 
begotten the feeling in every man*s 
breast that until he had offered himself 
to his country he owed an unpaid debt; 
and when a regiment was actually in 
process of organisation in your own 
neighbourhood, this was brought home 



44 The Making of a Regiment 

with redoubled force; when friends and 
neighbours to whom perhaps the sacrifice 
was greater than it possibly could be to 
yourself came forward, very shame made 
it difficult to hold back. Men really 
too old for service forgot a few years 
of their life and persuaded the muster- 
ing officer to wink at the deception. 
Boys, whose too glaring minority had 
alone prevented them thus far, yet in 
whose ardent hearts the spirit of the 
hour burned the more hotly by delay, 
sprang to the opportunity. In our 
own company there were a few men 
over forty-five years of age, and a much 
larger number of whom it would be a 
stretch of truth to say they were eigh- 
teen. It was pretty much the same 
throughout the ten companies. There 
were labouring men and mechanics, 
manufacturers and their employees, 
storekeepers and clerks, a few farmers, 
and a few students. There were young 



The Making of a Regiment 45 

men from the best families in the county 
and some ne'er-do-wells, but the mass 
of the company and of the regiment 
was composed of plain, intelligent men, 
workers in the industries of a busy 
community. As to nationality, there 
were a few Germans and a sprinkling 
of Irish, but the body of the regiment 
was American of old and solid New 
England and Dutch stock. I 

We enlisted on a strictly equal foot- 
ing, and chose our own company officers. 
The field officers, the colonel, lieutenant- 
colonel, and major, were elected by 
the company officers and appointed by 
the governor of the State. The non- 
commissioned officers, the Serjeants and 
corporals, were selected by the captains. 

The captain of our own company was 
a jeweller and an old member of a city 
militia organisation. Our first lieuten- 
ant was a banker's clerk, and our second 
lieutenant a mechanic who had in some 



46 The Making of a Regiment 

way acquired an excellent knowledge of 
tactics. These were fair examples of the 
officers of the regiment. Out of the 
forty or more of them, ten had served 
in the State militia ; a few of these ten 
had been with the " three months* men** 
who were called out at the beginning of 
the war ; scarcely one of them had ever 
seen a shot fired in anger ; the large 
majority, like the mass of the men, were 
destitute of any real military knowledge. 
As to the colonelcy, the officers had 
fixed their desires upon a member of 
one of the old regiments, a highly quali- 
fied man ; but the State authorities, in 
their inscrutable wisdom refused to 
appoint him, and sent us instead a staff 
officer who, though he had seen some 
slight service, was ignorant of infantry 
tactics and without experience in actual 
command. He was, however, an im- 
posing individual, a fine horseman, with 
a decidedly military bearing and a self- 



The Making of a Regiment 47 

assurance which temporarily concealed 
his defects. 

Such, then, was the regiment when 
it was ready to be mustered into the 
service. You might say, " This is 
not a regiment ; it is a mob,'* and 
you would be wrong. The men had 
gone through no such process of drill 
as is considered essential to the making 
of soldiers, yet they were not utterly 
ignorant even in this matter. It 
would have been hard at that time to 
find a young American who did not 
know something of the rudiments of 
infantry tactics. The political cam- 
paigns immediately preceding the war, 
with their semi-military organisations 
and their nightly processions, were a 
preparation for what followed which has 
been too little noticed. And when the 
war began, in every village " Home 
Guards" or drill classes were formed, 
and Hardee's and Casey's " Tactics '* 



48 The Making of a Regiment 

were well known and carefully studied 
books. We were all inexperienced, but 
only a small minority of the thousand 
men and officers were absolutely igno- 
rant of military drill ; moreover the 
mass of them were intelligent Americans, 
who learned quickly and easily. When 
we left the home camp a few weeks 
after enrolment, we could march decep- 
tively well, and the regiment actually 
received praise for its fine appearance 
from spectators whose frequent oppor- 
tunities had made them critical. Yet 
we were sadly defective. To keep step, 
to march by companies, to execute self- 
consciously a few motions of the manual 
of arms, is but the alphabet of tactics. 
The battalion, not the company is the 
tactical unit, and until a regiment has 
mastered the battalion drill and has 
learned skirmish work, it is unfit for 
modern warfare. In these essential 
things we were utterly unpractised. 



The Making of a Regiment 49 

There is also something else more 
important than drill. With regularly 
trained troops perfection of drill is 
simply the index of discipline. We 
were, in fact, very imperfect in both. 
Our discipline was certainly lax, yet 
even this was not wholly lacking. 
We were not a crowd of enthusiasts. 
Even at home we had for a year and 
a half lived in an atmosphere of war ; 
the breath of battle from afar had 
reached us ; we knew something of 
what it meant to be soldiers and what 
we were going into. The spirit of 
the hour enveloped us, and when we 
were formally mustered in and, with 
our right hands raised to heaven, took 
the oath of service, there was no wild 
cheering ; there was instead a feeling of 
awe. The soul of the army, the mys- 
terious solidarity of the mighty com- 
pelling organisation, seemed to take 
possession of us ; we knew that we 
4 



50 The Making of a Regiment 

were no longer our own. Discipline 
is already half learned when men are 
thus made ready for it. 

Washington was our first destination. 
We made the journey in freight cars, 
and on our arrival went into camp 
under canvas for the first time. It was 
shortly after the battle of Antietam, 
and the city was half camp, half 
hospital. Everywhere one met the 
monotonous blue uniforms : officers 
hurrying hither and thither ; wounded 
convalescents, pale and weary, stroll- 
ing about ; sentries and squads of 
provost guards ; occasionally a brigade 
of dusty and tattered veterans from the 
front, marching through the streets ; 
and near the railroad stations, train- 
loads of wounded men who had been 
brought in from the overcrowded field 
hospitals, lying on the floors of box 
cars, the stench of their undressed 
liurts filling the air. Everywhere the 



The Making of a Regiment 5 1 

atmosphere of war emptied of its 
glamour ! 

The Capital was the sore heart of 
the nation, and our glimpse of it was a 
wholesome lesson. It sobered us ; it 
took away all lingering sense of insub- 
ordination, and taught us the relentless 
power of the mighty machine of which 
we had become a part, and into which 
we knew we must be fitted. 

In a few days we were sent to Fred- 
erick City, and our army life began in 
earnest. For more than a week we 
slept without tents, upon the ground, 
under the open sky. We also took 
final leave of railroad transportation. 
We had to learn the use of our feet and 
the meaning of the march. After a 
short stay at Frederick, orders came to 
proceed to Hagerstown. Western 
Maryland was at that time strongly 
held by the Union forces, yet it was 
not a perfectly secure country. It was 



52 The Making of a Regiment 

subject to raids of the enemy's cavalry, 
and there was a spice of danger in our 
march. We proceeded by easy stages ; 
though, unseasoned as we were, the ten 
or twelve miles a day with our heavy 
loads seemed long enough ; and at 
night when we made our bivouac we 
took carefully guarded positions and 
threw out pickets. Once there was a 
rumour that Stewart's raiders were in 
the neighbourhood, and our colonel 
made us a little speech in his bravado 
style. He told us that we must not 
load our muskets, " that he greatly 
preferred the bayonet ! " Fortunately, 
we were unmolested. Everywhere 
along our march through that beauti- 
ful Maryland hill country we saw the 
marks of war. We crossed the famous 
South Mountain and a corner of the 
Antietam battlefield. There were 
groups of lonely graves by the road- 
side, and here and there the white tents 



The Making of a Regiment 53 

of lingering field hospitals. On one 
night we camped near Phil. Kearney's 
old brigade, one regiment of which had 
come from our own neighbourhood. 
Some of us went over to their camp 
to visit friends whom we had not seen 
since the beginning of the war. We 
saw the evening dress parade of that 
choice regiment. They were fresh 
from the perils and hardships of the 
campaign ; their ranks were sadly 
thinned, their clothes worn to rags, 
many of the men were nearly shoeless ; 
but their rifles and their fighting equip- 
ments were in perfect order, and their 
dress parade was performed with a 
precision which could scarcely have 
been surpassed had they been a bat- 
talion of regulars in garrison with 
spotless uniforms and white gloves. 

When we reached Hagerstown we 
found that we were assigned to a bri- 
gade of veterans, Yankees from the far 



54 The Making of a Regiment 

North, who had come from their an- 
cestral mountain farms at the first call 
of their country. They were, in many 
respects, a contrast to our friends whose 
dress parade we had witnessed. For 
those military forms and ceremonies so 
dear to the heart of the professional 
soldier they had small regard. They 
were noted foragers. Their com- 
mander, an officer of the regular army 
who afterwards became a distinguished 
division chief, said of them with min- 
gled vexation and admiration, " I never 
saw such men. It is impossible to tire 
them out. No matter how far or how 
hard you march them, at night they 
will be all over the country stealing 
pigs and chickens." Their five regi- 
ments were all from one State, and 
their esprit de corps was very strong. 
With quaint Yankee drawl they used 
to boast, " This old brigade has never 
been broke, and it never shall be.** 



The Making of a Regiment 55 

And I think they made good their 
word to the end. They obeyed their 
officers with prompt devotion, but only 
because they knew that this was a 
necessary part of discipline ; they had 
small reverence for rank or place. One 
of them once said to me, " When I am 
on guard, if I see an officer coming I 
always try to be at the other end of my 
beat, so that I won't have to salute 
him." And yet in small essentials 
these men were very precise soldiers. 
One evening one of them came over 
from his regiment to visit us. The 
enemy suddenly opened fire from his 
batteries away beyond the river. It 
was a common occurrence. There 
was no special danger ; the regiments 
were not even formed in line ; yet this 
veteran promptly took his leave. 
"You know,'* he said, "that when 
firing begins a man ought to be in his 
place in his own company." It was 



56 The Making of a Regiment 

so always. With all their independ- 
ence and contempt for convention- 
alities, the discipline prevailing in that 
brigade was really most rigid. They 
were not fond of reviews, and took no 
special pains to make a show on such 
occasions ; but to see the splendid line 
they kept in that deadly charge on the 
Fredericksburg heights, when one of 
their small regiments lost over a hun- 
dred men in a few moments, was 
enough to bring tears of admiration 
from a soldier's eyes ; and at Salem 
Heights, when at evening Stonewall 
Jackson's men, concentrated in over- 
whelming force, came down upon us 
in sudden, savage charge, and the 
brigade at our right was "smashed 
like a pitcher thrown against a rock," 
when every other hope seemed gone, 
these Yankees stood firm, with un- 
broken ranks, and saved the Sixth 
Corps from disaster. 



The Making of a Regiment ^y 

These were the soldiers whose ex- 
ample became our chief teacher in the 
art of war. Greenhorns as we were, 
they received us kindly into their fel- 
lowship, and, while they criticised 
freely, they were ever ready to give 
us full meed of praise for anything we 
did well. 

We were scarcely settled in our 
brigade camp before orders came 
which set the whole army in motion. 
From picturesque Hagerstown we 
marched toward the Potomac, and 
encamped for a few days in a grove 
of magnificent oaks. There was some 
musical talent of the popular sort 
in our regiment, and It had crystal- 
lised into a glee club whose free 
concerts about the camp-fires were 
the delight of the whole brigade and 
did much to make us pleasantly ac- 
quainted with our new friends. One 
of the men was an expert performer 



58 The Making of a Regiment 

on the banjo, and he had brought his 
dearly beloved instrument with him. 
Poor fellow, he was more fit for the 
concert-room than for a soldier's life, 
and a few weeks afterward he suc- 
cumbed to the toil of the march. He 
" straggled ** and was gobbled, banjo 
and all, by the Confederate cavalry, 
and we saw him no more. 

Reluctantly we left our pleasant camp 
under the oaks, and a short march 
brought us to the banks of the Potomac 
and in view of a pontoon bridge. That 
river was a Rubicon. On the other 
side of it lay the debatable land, the 
region of bloody battle, and the bridge 
which, like a dark line of fate lay across 
the water in the glow of twilight, seemed 
the final decision of our destiny. We 
had dreamed that we were to be em- 
ployed in garrison duty to relieve older 
and more experienced troops. Now 
we knew that we must take our share. 



The Making of a Regiment 59 

raw as we were, in the toil and peril of 
the coming campaign. Soldiers never 
know their destination on the march. 
Even the officers, unless they be corps 
or division commanders, are usually as 
much in the dark as the humblest pri- 
vates, and the river, with its pontoon 
bridge was a revelation to our veteran 
friends as well as to ourselves. We 
listened to their comments with hushed 
attention. " Well, here we are once 
more ; here is the river and there are 
the pontoons, and we are going over 
into Virginia again. The inhabitants 
of the land are all rebels, and yet the 
last time we were over there our gen- 
erals were mighty tender toward them. 
No foraging was allowed, and we sub- 
mitted tamely ; we spared the inhabi- 
tants. But this time, may the gods do 
so to us and more also if we spare 
them ! " 

There was something of the Crom- 



6o The Making of a Regiment 

wellian spirit among these Yankees, and 
in spite of the provost guard, they made 
good their threat. 

The crossing of that river in the 
morning marked a new stage in the 
making of the regiment. We entered 
upon our first real discipline, and it was 
that of the march. Our tramp through 
Maryland, which had seemed so severe, 
was really child's play. Now we were 
part of a great campaigning host, a 
mere unit in the moving mass in which 
we must perforce keep our place. The 
discipline of the march may seem very 
simple, and it is in fact, simpler in 
some ways than people suppose who 
have formed their ideas from what they 
have seen in city parades. The tactics 
of the march are elementary. The 
soldier must know how to keep his 
place in a column of fours ; the regi- 
ment must be able instantly to form in 
line. That is about all. On the march 



The Making of a Regiment 6 1 

there Is no attempt at keeping step ; 
there is far less apparent order than in 
a political parade. Each man carries 
his gun as he pleases, only so that he 
interferes with no one else. Yet, with 
loose order and apparent freedom there 
is really severest restraint. The ranks 
must be kept closed up ; to lag, even 
when you are most weary is a fault ; 
to drop out of your place and " strag- 
gle " is a crime. A man is but a cog 
in the wheels of a remorseless machine, 
and he must move with it. The march 
is an art which some otherwise well- 
drilled troops are slow in acquiring. 
A regiment of infantry is seldom allowed 
the road. When an army is moving 
through a hostile country, the roads are 
monopolised by the artillery and the 
supply and ammunition trains ; foot 
soldiers must take to the fields, find a 
way over ploughed ground or meadow, 
through fences, through brush, through 



62 The Making of a Regiment 

woods, across bridgeless streams. In 
spite of obstacles the column must press 
on keeping its formation intact, and 
keep closed up. This is no simple 
matter. 

Battle is one trial of a soldier s qual- 
ity ; the march is another scarcely less 
severe. It tries endurance. Did you 
ever walk twenty miles in a day? It 
is not a long walk, and it may be de- 
lightful. But if you have had to carry 
even a light satchel or a fish-basket 
with your wading-boots, you know how 
the trifling load tells before the day is 
over; how you try it first in one posi- 
tion, then in another, and each seems 
worse than the last. Now suppose 
yourself loaded with knapsack contain- 
ing your half of a shelter tent, your 
blanket, and a few other necessaries; 
haversack filled with three days* ra- 
tions ; cartridge-box with from forty to 
sixty rounds of ammunition ; canteen 



The Making of a Regiment 63 

of water, heavy musket and bayonet — 
fifty or sixty pounds in all. Your 
twenty miles will equal forty without 
the load ; yes, more than that, even if 
you could walk at will and choose the 
easiest paths, which is precisely what 
the soldier cannot do. You must 
stumble over stony places, and push 
through briers, and wallow through 
swampy ground, or toil through soft 
fields ; now and then you must wade a 
brook up to your knees or deeper, and 
for the next hour your shoes will weigh 
a pound more than they ought and 
gather mud and absorb gravel. Per- 
haps the regiment may take the high- 
road for a time, and the dust, beaten 
small and deep by preceding hoofs and 
wheels will enshroud you in a horrible 
cloud from which there is no escape, and 
penetrate every crevice of your clothing, 
and fill your eyes and ears and mouth 
and nostrils, and blind and choke you. 



64 The Making of a Regiment 

There is no martial music to cheer 
you on ; only the monotonous com- 
mand, " Close up, men ! " You lose 
consciousness of your soul, you know 
only that you have a body. Even that 
seems not to belong to you, it seems a 
badly oiled machine, part of a greater 
machine. And, then, on hot days the 
thirst ! Your canteen will soon be ex- 
hausted; you will look with longing 
eyes at every stagnant puddle, and 
when a brook is reached — I have then 
seen men break through all restraint 
and madly dash at the water in spite 
of the drawn swords of officers vainly 
struggling to keep the ranks whole. 
As the day wanes the weariness amounts 
to agony. Every bone aches, every 
nerve is unstrung ; strong men lose 
their self-control, sometimes almost 
their manhood. 

The moods of men on the march are 
a curious study. Perhaps early in the 



The Making of a Regiment 65 

day the whole Hne will break into song, 
especially if the route happens to be 
through an inhabited town. The 
Maryland villages used to ring with 

"John Brown* s body lies a-mouldering in the 
grave. 
But his soul goes marching on." 

Then silence will fall on every one as 
the burden begins to tell. Not a word 
will be spoken until some one breaks 
out with an oath, and then, all up and 
down the line, every man who ever 
swears will answer and the air v/ill be 
blue with blasphemy. 

War takes no account of Sabbaths. 
We often marched day after day until 
we fairly lost track of time and you 
might hear a dialogue like the following : 

" Bill, what day is this ? " 

" Why, don't you know ? This is 
Sunday." 

" By George ! is that so ? Well, 
there 's no rest for the wicked ! " 
5 



66 The Making of a Regiment 

And then the men would begin to 
talk about home, and somehow over 
the rudeness of war and the weariness 
of the march a breath of hallowed air 
would seem to waft itself, and the far- 
off sound of Sabbath bells would seem 
to steal, and the dim faces of distant 
loved ones would rise before us, until 
the spell would perhaps be broken by 
another chorus of profanity. 

By force of stern necessity we became 
a good marching regiment long before 
we had half learned tactical drill, and 
the discipline did several important 
things for us. Our marching was not 
peaceful ; it was through a hostile 
country. The enemy's cavalry hung 
about our flanks and rear and the 
sound of cannon was frequent. We 
had as yet no fighting but we were 
constantly threatened, and that helped 
the discipline. It taught us unceasing 
vigilance and the need of perpetual 



The Making of a Regiment 67 

readiness ; it also tried the nerves of 
our officers. The unfit ones began to 
drop off. First our lieutenant-colonel, 
then our major was smitten with what 
the men called " cannon fever." Their 
health failed suddenly, their resignations 
were offered and accepted and we were 
well rid of them. The captain of Com- 
pany A, who now became major, was a 
fine type of the class of men by whom 
our volunteer army was mainly offi- 
cered. He was a plain citizen who had 
been superintendent in a manufactory, 
and his military knowledge was only 
such as could be gained in a militia 
company. He had however, a strong 
soldierly instinct, and better still, his 
personal character compelled respect. 
Familiar in manner with no " airs," 
yet always dignified and firm ; modest, 
yet as we found when the test came, 
unflinchingly brave ; with keen natural 
intelligence, quick to grasp a situation 



68 The Making of a Regiment 

and prompt In action he proved that 
good officers are born, not made. His 
awkwardness on horseback afforded 
amusement only for a little while. In 
a few weeks he rode like a cavalryman, 
and every fresh trial of his quality 
raised him In our esteem and affection. 
The weeding process worked among 
the men in a different way. The old 
and weak and physically unfit broke 
down. Some of them died ; a number 
of them were discharged from the ser- 
vice. At the end of a month we had 
lost more officers and as many men as 
a smartly-contested battle would have 
cost us, and Instead of being weaker 
we were distinctly stronger for It. The 
law of the survival of the fittest was 
beginning to work. In another way 
the weeding process proceeded. Every 
army requires a great many non-com- 
batants as its servants. There must be 
waggoners, clerks at headquarters, ambu- 



The Making of a Regiment 69 

lance drivers, hospital attendants, " de- 
tailed men " of many sorts, and each 
regiment has to furnish its quota of 
these. When, therefore, an order 
would come to detail a man, perhaps 
for ambulance driver, the colonel would 
send it down to a captain with the hint, 
" Detail the worst dead beat in your 
company." Sometimes these non- 
combatant positions were sought by 
those who had no stomach for the 
fight, and thus, in different ways, our 
thinned ranks became cleaner. 

We learned other things by the disci- 
pline of the march. We learned to 
live as soldiers must. Life in a well- 
ordered camp and camp life in the 
field are vastly different. The army 
lived in shelter tents. These were 
simply pieces of cotton cloth about 
six feet square, and each man carried 
one piece on his knapsack. Two or 
three buttoned together and stretched 



70 The Making of a Regiment 

over such poles or sticks as could 
be found, or over muskets set in the 
ground when nothing else could be 
had, formed our habitation. We liter- 
ally carried our houses on our backs. 
We slept on the ground, or rather, 
we learned not to sleep on the ground. 
Pine branches made a luxurious bed, 
but anything served — dried grass, 
boughs of saplings, even corn stalks, 
though they were worse than boarding- 
house mattresses. I have slept on 
unthreshed wheat — anything to keep 
the body from direct contact with the 
ground, which, even in summer chills 
one through before morning. Then, 
wood for fires must be had. Through 
the hill country of Virginia we used the 
fences. When the welcome halt was 
called at evening and arms stacked, 
it was a sight to see eight or nine 
hundred men joining with wild cheers 
in a mad charge on the nearest rail 



The Making of a Regiment 71 

fence. Sometimes our colonel would 
draw us up in line and give the word, 
so that all might have an even chance, 
and then, after a brisk scrimmage the 
fence would disappear as if by magic. 
Dry rails made the best of camp-fires, 
but the skill which men developed at 
fire-making was wonderful. We had 
few axes beside the dozen carried by 
the pioneer corps, whose duty it was 
to clear obstructions from the road; 
we had to break up our rails or break 
down branches as best we could. Our 
jack-knives did yeoman service. Often 
green wood alone was available; and 
I have actually seen fires kindled in 
the midst of pouring rain with nothing 
but such apparently impossible mate- 
rials as green pine saplings. 

Two men from each company were 
detailed as cooks. They were seldom 
favourites with the men. On the march, 
and, finally, almost altogether their 



72 The Making of a Regiment 

services were dispensed with. We pre- 
ferred to do our own cooking, espe- 
cially when it came to the coffee. 
Coffee was our chief comfort and our 
main necessity. We carried it in the 
haversack, in a little bag with a parti- 
tion : on one side ground coffee, on 
the other, the smaller side, a little brown 
sugar ; and we made it generously and 
drank it strong. Coffee, hardtack, and 
salt pork were the standard marching 
rations. 

It was curious to notice how men 
treated the rations question. Three 
days' supply at a time was dealt out 
to us. Some of the men would make 
way with their stock in two days, and 
then go begging among their comrades. 
Upon others excessive weariness acted 
as a stay upon appetite, and the three 
days' rations would be more than 
enough. I think these were the men 
who stood the hardship of the march 



The Making of a Regiment 73 

best. After supper came sleep, the 
sleep of exhaustion ; and then, at day- 
break, the reveille, roll-call, hasty- 
breakfast (like the supper, of hardtack, 
pork, and coifee). Then canteens were 
filled from the nearest available water, 
knapsacks packed, and precisely at sun- 
rise the column would be formed and 
the march begun. The rule was, march 
two hours, rest ttn minutes; except at 
noon, when twenty minutes* rest was 
allowed. 

At these rests the men would lie 
down wherever they happened to be, 
and think the hard ground blessed 
and the time too short. Sometimes, 
though this was later during the bat- 
tle season, we had night marches, 
and as illustrating the result of the 
discipline of the march even upon new 
troops, I have seen men, when halt 
was called at night, lie down in the 
dusty road and fall instantly fast asleep; 



74 The Making of a Regiment 

but at the low-spoken order, " Fall in, 
men ! " they would as instantly rise, 
and, before they were fully awake step 
into their proper places in the line. 
Under the discipline of the march, 
in three months* time we had learned 
lessons which the best-trained city 
militia regiments never learn and which 
made us veterans in comparison with 
them. 

If you ask how we learned, I , can 
only answer that we did as we saw 
the old troops about us doing. And 
it is but justice to our colonel to say 
that he knew the duties of the march, 
and especially those of the camp, and 
was strict to the point of severity, with 
the officers especially. 

An army of a hundred thousand 
men on the march would be a wonder- 
ful sight if one could see it, but the 
columns stretch too far to be visible all 
at once. They reach for miles, and 



The Making of a Regiment 75 

woods or hills or valleys hide them. 
But occasionally we had impressive 
views from some height into the coun- 
try below, over which the endless lines 
moved like vast serpents, and some- 
times we had curious surprises. I re- 
member how one day our regiment 
took an unfrequented road and we 
seemed to be alone. No other troops 
were in sight, and all day long we spec- 
ulated upon our destination. Some 
thought we were being sent back to 
Washington for garrison duty; others 
that we were detached for some special, 
perhaps perilous, service. There were 
all sorts of surmises, but finally night 
came, and we camped on the hillside of 
a long and deep valley. We lighted 
our fires, and, in apparent response 
other fires began to twinkle from the 
hills beyond and beside us and from 
down in the valley, and, as it grew 
darker the fires increased in numbers 



76 The Making of a Regiment 

and in brightness until, in every direc- 
tion, as far as the eye could see, the 
lonely woods seemed changed as if by 
magic into a vast city. We were in the 
very midst of the great army ; we had 
been marching with it all day. 

Our first battle was that of Fred- 
ericksburg, and we went into it under 
every disadvantage. Our showy colonel 
was absent on sick-leave, our only field 
officer was our yet untried major; in 
fact, not a single one of our officers 
had ever been really under fire and, 
beside our imperfection in drill, we 
were wretchedly armed. In the haste 
to put us into the field we had been sup- 
plied with " Harper's Ferry '* smooth- 
bore muskets, — antiquated weapons 
utterly unfit for modern warfare. We 
knew they were useless except at short 
range ; we suspected that some of them 
would prove more dangerous to our- 
selves than to the enemy. The men 



The Making of a Regiment "JJ 

despised them, and called them " stuffed 
clubs ; '' but they saved us from being 
sacrificed. 

I was never prouder of my regiment 
than at the moment when we were 
ordered to the front. We had been 
for hours exposed to a long-range artil- 
lery fire, and one regiment after another 
of the brigade had been sent forward 
until we were left alone. We knew the 
helplessness of our inexperience and the 
uselessness of our old guns ; yet when 
the command came there was no fal- 
tering. The men marched away with 
cheerful readiness, and in better line 
than we could often show on parade. 
But ere we reached the battle's bloody 
edge we were ordered back again. The 
commander of the brigade protested. 
He said that, armed and officered as we 
were, it would be sheer murder to send 
us in. 

And so it happened that we saw that 



78 The Making of a Regiment 

awful battle from afar, though for two 
days we endured one of the most trying 
of the ordeals which come to soldiers. 
We had to lie still and be shot at. Few 
indeed are hit by long-range artillery 
fire, but every catastrophe seems doubly 
dreadful because you see it all and can 
do nothing but wonder if it will be your 
turn next. You fall into a dolefully 
speculative mood and into watching for 
the sound of the howling shells. You 
can tell if one is coming your way, but 
never just how near. Sometimes a shot 
will strike close in front and cover you 
with a shower of gravel, or a shell will 
explode over your head and rend the 
air with demoniac shrieks of flying frag- 
ments. Death seems even nearer and 
more horrible than in close battle where 
you can do as well as suffer. 

The panorama of that battle was a 
never-to-be-forgotten sight. From the 
amphitheatre of hills on either side the 



The Making of a Regiment 79 

river a hundred cannon roared. The 
space between seemed filled with a 
chorus of demons. In the lulls of this 
pandemonium, for miles along the line, 
the mournful, far-away skirmish fire 
echoed constantly, and ever and anon 
on that tragic Saturday, away at our 
right we could hear the shouts of 
charging men coming like a fateful wail 
across the field, and then the steady roll 
of the Confederate file fire from the 
deadly stone wall against which four- 
teen brigades were successively and 
vainly hurled. And every charging 
shout meant that men for duty's sake, 
but hopelessly, were meeting death by 
hundreds. 

Incidents of that battle will always 
dwell in my memory. There I saw a 
soldier's death for the first time. We 
were in line with other troops well up 
toward the front. Beyond, in the open 
fields the skirmishers were at work. 



8o The Making of a Regiment 

We could see little of them save the 
puffs of smoke from their rifles. A 
man came over from a neighbouring 
regiment to speak to a friend near me. 
As he stood talking, a bullet from the 
skirmish line struck him in the breast 
and he fell at our feet. I can feel 
the shock that went through me even 
now. 

Tragedy is scarcely ever without its 
by-play of comedy. We were for a 
time lying at rest behind a low, bare 
ridge which slightly protected us from 
the enemy's fire. Suddenly a rabbit 
started up from a little clump of bushes. 
Three or four soldiers instantly sprang 
after him. Presently the rabbit neared 
the ridge and ran to the top of it but 
his pursuers, now in full chase forgot 
all danger and followed. And the pic- 
ture in my mind is that of the rabbit 
and his reckless hunters darkly sil- 
houetted upon the summit of the ridge 



The Making of a Regiment 8 1 

and punctuated here and there with the 
sudden white cloud of a bursting shell. 
I think the rabbit escaped ; the men, I 
know came off unharmed. 

We had had no breakfast, and when 
the enemy^s fire lulled several of the 
men tried to do a little cooking. A 
comrade near me was busily engaged in 
frying a piece of pork in a pan extem- 
porised from an old canteen. Suddenly 
the batteries reopened ; several stacks 
of muskets were struck, with the effect 
of making them look like a nest of 
snakes. Our commander said, " Some 
of you men might as well move up 
nearer the ridge where there is better 
protection." I could see that my friend 
of the frying-pan was growing anxious. 
He looked at his pork and then at the 
shelter. It was hard to abandon his 
breakfast; but life was growing dearer 
every moment, and with sudden impulse 
he left all and ran for refuge. How 
6 



82 The Making of a Regiment 

big Corporal J , lyi^^g riear me, 

laughed as he rescued and appropriated 
the burning pork ! The man did not 
hear the last of that frying-pan incident 
for months ; yet he was a brave fellow, 
and afterwards did his duty nobly in 
the face of far greater danger than any 
we saw that day. 

Men will do queer things in battle. 
I knew of a regiment sent to support a 
battery when the enemy was about to 
charge. The men went to their post 
at the double quick with fixed bayonets, 
and just in front of the battery they 
were ordered to lie down so that the 
guns might fire over their heads. As 
they did so one man accidentally pricked 
another with his bayonet and the fel- 
low, enraged, struck at him. They 
dared not stand up to fight for fear 
of having their heads blown off by 
the battery close behind and therefore, 
on their knees, under the guns they 



The Making of a Regiment 83 

had it out in a fisticuff duel before 
the officers could interfere and stop 
them. 

We lost only a few men at Fredericks- 
burg but we gained a great experience. 
The battle took place in December and 
after it the army went into winter quar- 
ters. A field officer from one of the old 
regiments of the brigade was detailed to 
command us in the protracted absence 
of our colonel. He knew our defects. 
We needed drill. He gave it to us 
without stint and worked us as we had 
never been worked before — company 
and skirmish drill in the morning, bat- 
talion drill all the afternoon, so that 
after the evening dress parade we were 
as weary as bricklayers. Nothing es- 
caped his notice; he made you feel that 
his eyes were on you personally and 
his orders came in a sharp, explosive 
tone that made men jump. After an 
hour's hard work on the drill ground, 



84 The Making of a Regiment 

some of us would grow careless, and 
then that rasping voice would startle 
the whole battalion. " Why don*t that 
man hold that gun properly?*' and a 
half dozen muskets would straighten up 
with a jerk. 

Under our own colonel the discipline 
of the regiment had been excessive in 
unimportant details and lax in essentials. 
All this was changed. We felt our- 
selves ruled with an Iron hand, yet with 
just discrimination, so that while we 
stood in awe of our new commander we 
learned to like him greatly ; the more 
so when we found that he liked us, and 
in a lurid, unrepeatable epigram ex- 
pressed his opinion of what might have 
been made of us if he could have had 
us from the first. Then, too, he looked 
carefully after our comfort and our 
necessities. Some rascally quartermas- 
ter had nearly starved us with bad 
rations. He quickly stopped that. 



The Making of a Regiment 8 5 

Moreover, to our great satisfaction, new 
rifles for the regiment arrived. We 
gladly bade good-bye to our old "stuffed 
clubs," and we had occasional target 
practice with our new and effective 
weapons. A fresh spirit came into us ; 
we imagined ourselves fit for anything. 

Yet the regiment was really like a 
great boy who begins to think himself 
a man. The weeding process was still 
incomplete and progressing. Captains 
and lieutenants disappeared one by one. 
Some who were otherwise competent 
had broken down in health ; others had 
been proved unfit. Their places were 
filled by promotions, mainly of non- 
commissioned officers. 

Our experience was precisely that of 
almost every volunteer regiment in the 
army. After the first twelve months' 
service the line was usually transformed. 
Serjeants and corporals, men who had 
been appointed because of fitness rather 



86 The Making of a Regiment 

than chosen because of popularity or 
influence came into command as com- 
pany officers. In much less than a 
year not a single one of our original 
field officers remained, and only three 
of the ten original captains of com- 
panies. 

As to the men in general/the weed- 
ing process showed some results worthy 
of record. It proved that very few men 
over forty years of age were fit for war, 
either physically or morally, and that 
boys from eighteen to twenty made ex- 
cellent soldiers. It was not simply that 
the young fellows were more reckless, 
but they never worried about coming 
danger. They were more cheerful ; they 
fretted less over privations ; they ac- 
tually endured hardships better than 
older and stronger men. Our losses 
among the boys were chiefly in battle ; 
our losses among the old men were 
mainly by sickness and physical exhaus- 



The Making of a Regiment 87 

tion. Doubtless it might be different 
with a body of men carefully selected 
and gradually inured to a soldier's life | 
but in our volunteer regiments, hastily 
enlisted and composed of men whose 
habit of life was suddenly changed, the 
facts as observed in our experience 
would, I think, always hold good. 

The monotony of camp life was 
broken by frequent picket duty,, This 
was sometimes dangerous and often try- 
ing, especially to the non-commissioned 
officers on whom special responsibility 
rested ; yet in pleasant weather at least, 
it was a welcome change from the dull 
routine of camp. It was also an essen- 
tial part of our education. Pickets are 
the antennae of an army. In the face 
of the enemy the antennae become 
formidable as skirmishers. A picket 
line, in case of need is quickly trans- 
formed into a skirmish line. Nothing 
teaches vigilance, the use of independent 



88 The Making of a Regiment 

judgment, prompt action In emergency, 
and at the same time strict subordina- 
tion, like outpost or skirmish work. 
We had some exciting and some amus- 
ing experiences. 

One night the line ran through a 
swampo It was moonlight, and in the 
small hours toward morning things 
looked weird and ghostly. In visiting 
my sentries I came to one of our boys, 
a mere stripling, whom I found in a 
state of high excitement. " Serjeant," 
he said, " I wish I could be relieved ; 
I 'm afraid to stay here." I asked him 
what the trouble was and he answered, 
" There *s a wolf out there," pointing 
to a dismal clump of bushes. " I saw 
him come out of the woods and go 
across the swamp into those bushes. 
He was close to me. I do wish I could 
be relieved ; I 'm afraid to stay here 
alone ! " 

I knew it was a trick of the imagina- 



The Making of a Regiment 89 

tion, or possibly a stray fox, and told 
him so ; but it was of no use. The 
poor fellow's terror was pitiful. Yet 
that same boy was afterward as bold as 
a lion when bullets were flying thick and 
men were falling about him. 

Toward the end of January there 
were rumours in the air. They fur- 
nished food for camp gossip, and were 
beginning to leave us sceptical, when 
orders came suddenly, and we found 
ourselves one gray morning actually 
on the move — where or why we knew 
not, though it was clear that no ordin- 
ary enterprise was at hand ; for the 
whole army was in motion, and in 
all our experience, never had a march 
been so forced. It was hurry, hurry, 
almost at a trot, with rests so infrequent 
and so short that men, from sheer in- 
ability to keep the pace began to drop 
out of the ranks. The roads were good, 
but the sky was overcast and when. 



90 The Making of a Regiment 

early in the evening we halted and 
pitched our shelter tents for the night, 
the weather was threatening. Before 
morning a cold, northeast storm had set 
in; all day long the icy rain poured 
down. The Virginia roads were speed- 
ily melting into muddy creeks. The 
movement of artillery or pontoons was 
fast becoming an impossibility; but 
at nightfall a desperate attempt was 
made. Our regiment was among the 
unfortunates detailed to extricate the 
ponderous pontoon train from its muddy 
fetters. Imagine a bridge of boats 
loaded upon waggons, each great flat- 
bottomed boat about twenty feet long, 
and alternating with the boats, waggon- 
trucks loaded with bridge timbers, six 
or eight horses to each of these un- 
wieldy vehicles, and the whole train 
hopelessly mired in a rough wood road ; 
wheels sunk to the hubs, horses floun- 
dering helplessly, some of them half 



The Making of a Regiment 9 1 

dead with their terrible work ; the night 
dark, the half-frozen rain pouring piti- 
lessly — and then perhaps you may 
picture the task which was ours. Mus- 
kets, equipments, even overcoats were 
left at our tents. We were marched 
about a mile to the place where the 
pontoons were stalled ; ropes were made 
fast to the waggons and, with a hundred 
men to each, we dragged them one after 
another out of the woods into open 
ground. There they sank more hope- 
lessly than ever. The force of men 
had to be doubled. We could have 
drawn them far more easily without 
wheels ; but at last, when it was nearly 
midnight they were all ranged upon 
solid ground on a little knoll. 

As to ourselves, we were drenched 
with the rain, bruised with our falls, 
half frozen with the cold, and plastered 
with mud from head to foot. And in 
this plight we were kept standing idly 



92 The Making of a Regiment 

for a bitter hour, waiting for another 
division of the pontoon train. But it 
never came, and finally we were per- 
mitted to return to our tents where we 
found everything, even our blankets 
soaked with the merciless rain. 

The work and exposure had been 
horrible. I remember, as we marched 
back to camp seeing one poor fellow, 
a member of a veteran regiment, who 
had apparently gone crazy under the 
strain ; he was screaming and swearing 
wildly, while his comrades vainly strove 
to calm him. 

By morning the failure of the enter- 
prise, which was an attempt to surprise 
the enemy, was evident. The retreat 
of the army through the mud and the 
rain which followed was an experience 
the horror of which none that shared it 
can forget. The elements were the foes 
which prevailed against us then, and the 
demoralisation of the army was worse 



The Making of a Regiment 93 

than any we ever saw inflicted by battle 
with mortals. Many men died from 
exposure and exhaustion. This was the 
famous " mud march.'' 

Winter passed quickly after this, and 
with the spring came preparation for a 
new campaign. Our jaunty colonel had 
recovered his health and returned to 
duty ; the list of field officers was com- 
pleted by the appointment of a new 
lieutenant-colonel. All that we knew 
of him was that he had served with dis- 
tinction upon General Hancock's staff. 
He was eccentric in manner, evi- 
dently unpractised In the handling of 
an infantry regiment, and we took to 
him none too kindly at first. But when 
we came to know him his high charac- 
ter, his resourcefulness and his noble 
courage won our admiration and our 
profound respect. He was destined 
soon to become the commander of the 
regiment. 



94 The Making of a Regiment 

The last step, the most important of 
all, in the making of the regiment was 
now before us. At the first Fredericks- 
burg we had endured the trial of battle 
partially and passively. The more real 
and active experience was now before us. 
We were members of Sedgwick's Corps, 
whose brilliant capture of the Freder- 
icksburg heights turned the tide of 
disaster at the battle of Chancellorsville 
and failed to pluck victory from defeat 
only because of the unaccountable inert- 
ness of the commander of the Union 
forces. Our regiment was one of those 
chosen to form part of one of the storm- 
ing columns. It may seem strange that 
new troops should be selected for such 
perilous and difficult duty, yet this was 
often done. The new regiments were 
strong in numbers ; they had not been 
decimated by battle and disease ; and 
though less reliable than older battal- 
ions, when no complicated manoeuvres 



The Making of a Regiment 95 

were required, when the only thing was 
to go straight forward against a fire from 
the front their wild elan sometimes 
accomplished wonders. They were 
seldom spared in close battle ; it was a 
way, though a costly one, to break them 
in and make soldiers of them. The 
heaviest losses often fell upon them. 

Placed between two other regiments 
of the brigade, in a sunken road where 
we were sheltered from the enemy's fire, 
we anxiously awaited the signal for the 
assault. We could see something of the 
work before us. Nearly a mile of open 
field lay between us and the base of the 
hills whose crests were crowned with the 
Confederate earthworks, and every foot 
of that open ground was swept by their 
fire, it must be crossed before the 
storming column could reach the heavi- 
est part of its task\ and begin the real 
assault upon those deadly hills. All 
along at our right, away up into the 



96 The Making of a Regiment 

streets of Frederick a mile or more away 
other columns were stationed at inter- 
vals, some of them facing stronger de- 
fences than those against which our 
attack was to be directed. 

At noon precisely, the signal guns 
boomed out and we sprang to the 
charge. From the very first our colo- 
nel blundered. He failed to obey his 
orders ; he led us wildly in a wrong 
direction under the very guns of one 
of our own batteries. The hills in front 
of us flamed and roared with hostile fire 
and our men were beginning to fall, but 
this disturbed us less than the confusing 
orders which sent us now this way, 
now that. It seemed as though the 
regiment was doomed to disgrace, if 
not to destruction. Then it was that 
we discovered the heroic character of 
our lieutenant-colonel. Ignoring his 
incompetent and now helpless superior, 
he calmly assumed command and there, 



The Making of a Regiment 97 

in the face of the enemy's fierce fire 
halted us, re-formed our disordered line 
and led us forward once more. There 
was no lack of courage in the men ; 
they were willing to do all that could 
be asked of them. Throughout the 
remainder of that deadly though glo- 
rious charge the regiment proved that 
all it needed was what it had at last 
found — a true leader. We gained the 
crest of the hills along with the rest of 
the column. Our first real battle was 
fought. We had come through it, not 
indeed faultlessly — few new regiments 
ever do that — but so that we could 
look with reverence upon our torn flag, 
and view our sadly thinned ranks with 
sorrow but without shame. Not per- 
fectly, yet not unworthily we had en- 
dured the ordeal of battle. 

In seven months the regiment, which 
left home little better than a mob save 
for the character of its members and the 
7 



98 The Making of a Regiment 

spirit which animated it, had become a 
battalion of seasoned and well-officered 
soldiers fit to take its place in a brigade 
of veterans. We had learned to wear 
the armour so hastily put on. We had 
fitted ourselves to it. 

If the story of the making of this 
regiment is worth the telling, that is 
not because it is in any way exceptional 
but because it is typical. Some regi- 
ments were more fortunate than ours 
in their first commanders ; some met the 
test of battle sooner. Details vary, yet 
the process through which we went is 
a fair example of that by which hun- 
dreds of thousands of peaceful American 
citizens were transformed into the sol- 
diers of one of the most formidable 
armies of history. The process was not 
ideal; it was in many ways illogical, 
unmilitary and wasteful; yet its results 
have seldom been surpassed 



The Household of the 
Hundred Thousand 

THE site of the old home camp, 
the first mustering ground of 
many regiments, is now covered with 
pretty suburban homes about which I 
sometimes think, the ghosts of war 
times must play at midnight. 

For us young fellows it was a rude 
beginning of real life when we found 
ourselves inside the great board fence 
and line of sentries which enclosed the 
rows of rough, wooden barracks. The 
members of our own company were 
indeed mostly neighbours, their faces 
were familiar, we had grown up to- 
gether; yet never before had we been 



lOO The Household of the 

thrown into such intimate association. 
It is one thing to meet a man every- 
day on the street or even at work ; it is 
quite another to be compelled to bunk 
with him and take your breakfast out 
of the same camp-kettle. For the 
youth who had been kept in a glass 
case at home this experience was trying 
and often disastrous, but for the most 
of us it was wholesome. We learned 
our own hitherto-unsuspected faults, we 
discovered the good qualities of even 
our most faulty comrades, we saw human 
nature at close range. 

Even the officers could not escape 
the influence of this enforced com- 
mingling. They had, indeed, separate 
quarters and their own mess ; they stood 
also on a vantage ground of almost 
despotic authority, for from the moment 
when we were mustered into service 
we were subject to the same military 
law which governed the regular army. 



Hundred Thousand loi 

But drawn as our officers were from the 
same mass, knowing their men for old 
neighbours, often for intimate friends, 
frequently for those who had been at 
least their social equals they could not 
hold themselves far aloof, and few of 
them cared to do so. They could form 
no separate caste and this, perhaps, 
had its disadvantages ; but for these 
there were certainly large compensa- 
tions. It became necessary for an offi- 
cer to prove his right to rank by qualities 
of leadership. The best officers were 
those who, without sacrifice of dignity 
kept a lively sense of comradeship with 
their men. 

The work of drill began before we 
received either arms or uniforms, and 
from the very first we managed to go 
through with that essential of camp life, 
the evening dress parade. Then the 
grounds would be filled with spectators, 
mostly home friends ; fathers, mothers, 



I02 The Household of the 

wives, sisters and sweethearts, bringing 
with them dainties to supplement what 
seemed to them the hard fare of camp. 
We lived well and were not a little 
spoiled in those days ; and when we 
departed for the front, the mistaken 
kindness of those who loved us loaded 
us down with all sorts of knick-knacks 
for comfort and convenience. Though 
loath to part with these, our first march- 
ing days made us more loath to carry 
them. When a man's back becomes 
his only storehouse, he soon finds that 
riches do not consist in the abundance 
of the things which he possesses. Pat- 
ent writing-cases, extra socks and mit- 
tens, "ponchos'* for the shoulders, 
"havelocks" for the head, etc., etc., 
began to strew the road, and in a short 
time we were reduced to an absolutely 
socialistic equality in -this world's goods. 
Whatever differences remained were 
those purely personal ones which can 



Hundred Thousand 103 

be discovered only by experience of 
each other's ways and characters. 

In a regiment of a thousand men any 
extensive acquaintance outside one's own 
company comes slowly ; yet many things 
served to bring us into fellowship. 
There was little clannishness, every 
man in blue was a comrade ; yet, after 
all, each company was a family by itself, 
and in the company little coteries col- 
lected like the eddies in a river pool. 

On the march two men usually tented 
together. In camp, when logs or brush 
were available, four could use their tent 
pieces to better advantage than two or 
three, and the camp was thus made more 
compact. 

Men came together as tent-mates by 
a process of natural or social selection. 
They had been schoolmates or work- 
fellows in the same shop, perhaps they 
were related as brothers or cousins, or 
they had been near neighbours and old 



I04 The Household of the 

friends. So it was at first ; but new 
experiences in toil and peril were often 
solvents out of which new associations 
crystallised. Kindred spirits found each 
other; more and more the company- 
became a greater family within which 
lesser and more intimate families grew 
up. Sometimes there were disagree- 
ments which broke up first arrange- 
ments ; but commonly a quiet, almost 
unnoticed attraction of affinity drew the 
final groups together in bonds seldom 
broken save by death or disabling 
wounds or sickness. A few of these 
soldierly friendships bind old men even 
to-day ; many more are cherished by 
lonely survivors as memories too sacred 
for common talk. 

When for months you and your com- 
rade have slept at night under one 
blanket and shared each other's daily 
bread, even though it were but hard- 
tack ; when you have learned to depend 



Hundred Thousand 105 

on him and he upon you for help in 
trouble or comfort in sickness ; when 
together you have entered the hell of 
deadly battle — after which the first 
question would be : " Is Joe safe ? ** 
"Where is Sam?" "Is little Gus 
alive ? " — when together you have 
suffered hunger, thirst, heart-breaking 
weariness ; above all, when, huddled 
together in storm or cold you have 
had to endure long days of dreary, 
monotonous, comfortless idleness then 
you know what it means to live a com- 
mon life with a fellow-man ; and if he 
and you meet the test, then you know 
what friendship means. 

In the routine of camp life the music 
of drum and fife was conspicuously 
audible. We were wakened at daybreak 
by the shrill tune of the reveille ; the 
last sound at night was that of the drum 
perambulating the camp with " taps," 
commanding " lights out " and sleep ; 



io6 The Household of the 

while all day long frequent summons 
to varied duties came by "call" of 
drum and fife. There was " sick call," 
which brought all the indisposed who 
were able to walk into forlorn squads 
to be conducted by the orderly Ser- 
jeants to the surgeon's tent for treat- 
ment. Its absurdly merry notes seemed 
to say : 

" Come to the Doctor's 
And get your castor oil." 

Then "guard call," inevitable as the 
day, but always unwelcome. Drill call 
or " assembly " meant simply our daily 
work. At dress parade, which closed 
the day's active duties, the band dis- 
coursed its most martial strains, and 
after supper we heard it once more in 
the pleasant tones of "retreat,* and 
later of " tattoo " the music of which 
comes most impressively into recollec- 
tion. From one camp after another the 
measured minor strains would sound 



Hundred Thousand 107 

forth ; from near and far, from camps 
away beyond our sight, it would melt 
into distance, and then beyond the 
westward woods the artillery bugles 
would take it up until it died away 
with their mellow notes. It was the 
voice of the comradeship of a mighty, 
invisible host. 

One can readily understand how per- 
sistently, how intimately this music of 
drum and fife wove itself into our lives. 
Some of those queer, old-fashioned, half- 
melancholy, half-merry tunes sing them- 
selves in my memory even now. 

What of the band in the day of 
battle ? Was not martial music the 
soldier's inspiration ? Did we not 
charge to its thrilling strains? We did 
nothing of the kind. There was other 
work for the musicians. On the ap- 
proach of battle they were always sent 
to the rear for duty as stretcher-bearers 
and helpers in the field hospital. One 



io8 The Household of the 

pretty sure sign that bloody work was 
before us was the disappearance of the 
band ; and the grimmest, most sicken- 
ing, yet most merciful work of war was 
theirs at such times. 

In active campaigning, our camps 
were apt to be hasty, though never dis- 
orderly bivouacs, and even if a few 
days* halt were made and the camp 
duly formed, rest for weary and foot- 
sore men took precedence of drill and, 
in fact, of everything not absolutely 
necessary. But one thing was inevi- 
table as day and night. This was roll- 
call. In storm or sunshine, in camp 
or on the march, before and after battle, 
the first thing in the morning and the 
last at night, we had to answer to our 
names. The first serjeant calls the 
roll. He knows the list by heart, and 
calls it off without book, in the dark 
if need be. 

At first irritatingly suggestive of that 



Hundred Thousand 109 

more than schoolboy tutelage which is 
one penalty of a soldier's life, the morn- 
ing and evening roll-call by its insistent 
monotony gradually grew into an ac- 
cepted item of existence, like salt pork 
and hard-tack. But when exposure, 
toil and battle began to thin the ranks, 
the roll-call gained a new meaning; it 
became a none too oft-repeated personal 
history of our lives, a daily bulletin of 
passing events and a reminder of those 
already past. It told of the sick and 
disabled, of those fallen out by the way, 
prisoners perhaps in the hands of the 
enemy, here and there of one promoted, 
here and there of one dead. There 
were days when those of us who could 
answer to our names did so with a feel- 
ing of solemn thankfulness and other 
days when the omission, or perhaps the 
inadvertent calling of a name sent a 
rush of sad remembrance through the 
ranks. 



no The Household of the 

Imagine, if you can, the roll-call at 
night after a day of battle ! — the mus- 
tering of the thinned company in the 
darkness ; the suspense as the familiar 
names are spoken — it may be by an 
unfamiliar voice, for in battle death 
seemed to seek and find the Serjeants ; 
the frequent pauses for inquiry ; perhaps 
the answer of a comrade for one who 
has fallen, perhaps a mournful silence. 
Oh, those silent names ! For days, yes, 
for weeks and months every now and 
then you seem to hear them at evening 
roll-call, and somewhere, close beside 
you it may be, an unseen presence 
seems to whisper : "Here ! " 

I think all who passed through it 
remember the winter of the Fredericks- 
burg campaign with a shudder. Pre- 
ceding the battle came freezing nights 
with thawing days, rain-soaked or snow- 
bound camps ; days when our little 
tents were first buried In the snow, then 



Hundred Thousand 1 1 1 

frozen so stiff that when marching 
orders came we could scarcely strike 
or fold them ; then short but horrible 
marches through slush and mud with 
our doubly-heavy half-frozen loads ; 
scanty rations withal because of delayed 
supply trains : a month of exposure, 
discomfort, and misery. 

The like of this is, however, what 
soldiers must expect, and if victory had 
come at the end we could have borne 
far worse hardship cheerfully. But the 
climax was the slaughter at Fredericks- 
burg. The sting of that defeat was felt 
not as a dishonour, but as undeserved 
disaster. We knew that courage and 
devotion such as any people might be 
proud of had been uselessly sacrificed. 
Yet the gloom of those winter days 
after the battle was not that of despair ; 
it was the bitter prospect of indefinitely 
prolonged struggle, an outlook dark 
indeed to men who were soldiers not 



1 1 2 The Household of the 

for glory but only for home and 
country. 

The depression of that time was 
doubtless responsible for at least as 
large a loss of life as the battle beside 
the river. Hardship and exposure had 
bred sickness, and the mood of the 
hour offered feeble resistance to death. 
For months the little funeral proces- 
sions were mournfully frequent ; from 
our own brigade alone there were often 
two or three in a day. 

There are no funerals on the march ; 
there are none after battle. On the 
march, if a man falls out of the ranks 
stricken with mortal sickness or ex- 
haustion he is left to be picked up by 
the ambulance, perhaps to die alone 
by the way. The column cannot halt. 
After battle, there are but ghoulish 
burials. But in settled camp the de- 
cencies of death are rudely observed. 

The first funeral in our company 



Hundred Thousand 1 1 3 

was that of one of our Serjeants, a 
young man whom we all loved. He 
died shortly after Christmas-time. A 
box of good things from home had 
lately arrived ; out of the boards of 
that box we managed to make a coffin 
for our dear comrade and the whole 
company marched to his grave. But 
the most of our dead were buried with- 
out coffin and funerals became too 
common for any but scantiest ceremony. 
A drum, and fife playing the Dead 
March, a firing squad of three to give 
a parting volley over the grave, then 
the chaplain, then the body of the dead 
soldier wrapped in his blanket and 
carried on a stretcher by two men 
followed perhaps by half-a-dozen inti- 
mate friends, and that was all. 

In the brigade graveyard at the top 
of the hill which grew so dismally in 
population during the winter, there 
were no headstones — only little pine 



114 The Household of the 

boards torn from empty cracker-boxes, 
with the name of the departed written 
thereon In lead pencil or cut in with a 
jack-knife. I remember several head- 
boards hewn from cedar, the most last- 
ing of woods, made with great care 
and pains, with deep-cut inscriptions. 
These, you may be sure were stronger 
proof of true affection than many of the 
costly monuments which challenge the 
beholder's eye in our great cemeteries. 

It is a pathetic fact that all through 
the war many men who might have 
recovered from the fevers and other 
ailments common to a soldier's life died 
because homesickness had quenched 
their power of resistance to disease. 
Indeed there were not a few deaths 
from homesickness pure and simple. It 
is not a complaint recognised in official 
reports, but ask any army surgeon and 
he will probably tell you some surpris- 
ingly sad tales. 



Hundred Thousand 115 

Fatal cases were, however, excep- 
tional, though the ordinary malady was 
common enough. Sometimes its mani- 
festations were serio-comic, as for in- 
stance in my own case. 

In the midst of our worst other dis- 
comforts, we were for a time compelled 
to subsist upon ancient hard-tack, which 
was often in such condition that, "if 
you called, it would come to you ; " and 
one day I strolled off alone into the 
woods beyond the camp and sitting 
on a log, gave myself to meditation. I 
thought of my privations, not bitterly, 
but with a deliberate and curiously an- 
alytical wonder. I said to myself: 
" How much more a man can stand 
than he would have believed possible !" 
Then my thoughts wandered to my 
far-away home with its simple luxuries 
and comforts, and that which came 
most vividly to mind was the fact that 
once — it seemed ages ago — I had 



Ii6 The Household of the 

really had good, wholesome soft bread 
to eat every day, and three times a day 
at that ! I then began to ask myself: 
" Would I ever again have soft bread 
every day ? " " Was it possible that 
such happiness could be mine ? '* And 
I said to myself dolefully : " No ! It 
is not likely. You are a soldier; you 
can henceforth have only soldier's fare ; 
you will probably fill a soldier's grave. 
You will never taste soft bread again ! " 

Now this may seem absurd in the 
telling, yet God knows it was horribly 
real at the time. 

But this was only a passing mood 
with the mass of us. We were a host 
of young men ; life was too strong and 
elastic for even the depression which 
followed Fredericksburg to hold us 
down. We found ways to amuse 
ourselves. 

One of the frequent but evanescent 
snow-storms of that semi-southern land 



Hundred Thousand 117 

had fallen, and snowballing became a 
common sport. Finally an organised 
contest was proposed between our regi- 
ment and two others of the brigade. 
We were so much stronger in numbers 
than the older regiments that this ap- 
parently one-sided arrangement only 
equalised forces, and as an offset we 
were given the doubtful advantage of 
the defensive. Both sides were drawn 
up in rigid military array with officers 
in their places of command. As for 
ourselves, we made piles of snov/balls 
and awaited the onset. It came like a 
whirlwind ; those veterans had not been 
through a dozen real battles for noth- 
ing, and as their line approached and 
the missiles began to fly, it was like a 
hailstorm. The snowballs were wet 
and hard, often icy ; both sides were in 
hot earnest and like the ancient Ro- 
mans we aimed at the faces of our foes. 
I hardly know how it all looked for I 



1 1 8 The Household of the 

was in the thick of it and almost 
blinded, but I know how it felt. If 
the snowballs had been bullets, I should 
have been riddled from head to foot. 

We stood our ground manfully for a 
little while ; but the too subtle strategy 
of our commander had divided our 
force ; we were outnumbered at the 
critical pKjint and the superior disci- 
pline of our opponents prevailed. We 
had to confess ourselves beaten ; and 
from the way our veteran friends crowed 
over us I almost think they were 
tempted to inscribe that snowball vic- 
tory on their battle-flags. 

An even better antidote for the blues 
was the work which became necessary 
as the army went into winter quarters. 
There is no pleasanter occupation than 
home building, be it ever so rude, and 
we took much pains and found great 
enjoyment in the making and furnish- 
ing of our little houses. Some regi- 



Hundred Thousand 1 1 9 

ments whose location was near suitable 
timber built good-sized log huts ; we 
were compelled to be more modest. 
The dwelling which my own group of 
four tent-mates erected and occupied 
may serve as a fair example. Four 
pieces of shelter tent buttoned together 
made the roof which covered a log 
structure twelve feet long and five or 
six feet wide. The log walls were 
about three feet high ; but as the 
ground sloped away from the company 
street we dug out the rear half of our 
hut, and there we had a little room in 
which we could stand erect. This 
served for our kitchen. The more ele- 
vated part was occupied by a broad 
bed of poles covered with dried grass 
and our blankets. This made a springy 
couch on which the four of us could 
sleep comfortably side by side ; and the 
edge of the bed was just high enough 
to make a convenient seat with our 



I20 The Household of the 

feet resting on the kitchen floor. About 
the sides of the house were shelves and 
pegs for our belongings. 

In the kitchen end, beside the door, 
we built a fireplace and chimney. 
Now a wooden fireplace and chimney- 
may seem ludicrously impractical, yet 
that is what we and thousands of others 
actually built from green pine sticks. 
But we fireproofed it with a coating of 
clay on the inside, and it answered its 
purpose perfectly. It "drew" finely 
and gave us no end of solid comfort. 
Some of the chimneys did not work so 
well and then the draught was in- 
creased by the precarious expedient of 
an empty, headless barrel placed on top. 
This generally served for a short time ; 
but the barrel was pretty sure to take 
fire and then there would be a grand ex- 
citement and much merriment over the 
frantic eflfort to extinguish the blaze. 

Not the chimneys alone played tricks 



Hundred Thousand 121 

on the householders. Mischievous 
comrades have been known to drop a 
handful of cartridges down a chimney 
from the outside, with the result of a 
smothered explosion and a great scat- 
tering of ashes and embers over every- 
thing and everybody within. 

The spirit of fun also found outlet in 
the adornment of the gables of our 
dwellings with various legends sugges- 
tive of the personal peculiarities of the 
inmates. For instance, of two queerly 
assorted tent-mates, one had been a 
church sexton and a conspicuous func- 
tionary at village funerals ; the other 
had worked in a silverware factory. 
Over their door some wag tacked a 
sign with the inscription : 

DowD AND Griffith, 
Jewellers and Undertakers. 

As few of us were content with the 
wholesale and not too dainty work of 



122 The Household of the 

the company cooks, we did most of 
our cooking ourselves by our kitchen 
fires, and those of us who survived the 
war learned enough to make us useful 
to the women who were wise enough to 
choose us as husbands, though I fear 
the details of our housekeeping would 
have shocked them. 

Many a pleasant evening we spent 
about our little fireplace. We talked 
about home, the girls we loved, relig- 
ion, politics, literature, camp gossip, 
everything. Or we read, when we had 
books or papers from home, or wrote 
letters or our journals. 

There was, however, little real pri- 
vacy in those huts so close together 
with their canvas roofs. Any loud 
talk could be heard from one to the 
other and in the evening after " re- 
treat" the camp became a very babel 
of men singing, talking, laughing, swear- 
ing, telling stories; a chorus in one 



Hundred Thousand 123 

tent, a game of cards in another; in 
three or four at once loud discussions 
of the doings in the regiment or of the 
state of the country. 

At nine o'clock " taps ** sounded, and 
the officer of the day went the rounds 
to see that all lights were out. This 
was early bed-time in the long winter 
nights, and by various ruses we man- 
aged to conceal the glimmer of candles 
re-lighted after the officer had returned 
to the guard-house. The Bible and 
Shakespeare were responsible for some 
of these evasions of military regulations, 
quiet little games of cards for more of 
them. 

Speaking of cards and Bibles brings 
up the image of the chaplain. 

A friend in a regiment distinguished 
for its high discipline and its severe 
losses in many battles said to me one 
day : " A good chaplain makes a good 
regiment.*' Then, in illustration he 



124 "The Household of the 

told me the story of their own chap- 
lain, a man of fine culture, high social 
position and great devotion to his 
calling. In his pastoral visits through 
the camp if he surprised a group en- 
gaged in a game of " bluff/' he would 
quietly scoop up the stakes, put the 
money in his own pocket and say : 
" Boys, this is for the hospital fund." 
Strange to say, the boys never mur- 
mured. The cheerful but shamefaced 
reply was always, " All right, chaplain." 

I think no one will wonder who 
hears the rest of the story. 

On the eve of battle this chaplain 
took personal command of the stretcher- 
bearers and when the combat was 
raging he would lead his little band of 
helpers into the thickest fire to succour 
the wounded. My friend told me : " I 
have known him to creep out between 
the opposing Jines to bring off wounded 
men. The boys all knew that if ^they 



Hundred Thousand 125 

got into trouble, Chaplain H would 

be there to help if this was in the power 
of mortal man." There were other 
chaplains of like spirit. Our own was 
not only untiring in his care for the 
sick and wounded in the hospitals, but 
always ready for any kindly service he 
could render to the members of the 
regiment or to their families at home. 
But it must be confessed that they were 
not all of this stamp. It was quite 
possible for the chaplain to be the most 
useless officer in a regiment. 

It could not be said of our regiment 
that we were like the men of Cromwell's 
" new model," yet we came from com- 
munities in which Puritanism was tra- 
ditional and in almost every company 
there were at least a few examples of 
strong Christian character. The two 
Serjeants in our own company who 
died in the service, one by sickness and 
the other in battle were men of this 



126 The Household of the 

sort, and one of our captains who fell in 
battle was a man whose Christian life 
was a benediction to the regiment. 

But occasionally one met with what 
good people might consider strange in- 
consistencies. I have heard swearing 
euphemistically described as the utter- 
ance of " short prayers." One of our 
field officers was a man whose godly 
life was known to all, yet in intense 
moments short prayers of startling char- 
acter would escape him. 

On a Sunday, so it was said, a group 
of officers gathered in his tent fell 
into warm discussion of some trouble- 
some regimental affair. The lieutenant 
colonel paced back and forth with his 
hands behind him taking no part in the 
conversation but biting his bristly mous- 
tache, as was his wont when annoyed. 
Suddenly he stopped short and, facing 
them exclaimed : " Well, gentlemen, 
let 's stop this damned quibbling and go 



Hundred Thousand 127 

and worship God awhile/' Then pick- 
ing up his Bible he strode off by himself 
into the woods, leaving his guests to 
their reflections. 

Religious men were apt to be more 
intense in the army than at home, and 
those who frequented the prayer-meet- 
ings in the tents or, in pleasant weather, 
under the trees, will never forget their 
atmosphere of warm and solemn earnest- 
ness. 

On the night before we stormed 
Marye's Hill the moon shone through 
fleecy clouds and it was only partly 
dark. We lay in line of battle at rest, 
the most of us trying to sleep. Pres- 
ently, out toward the front between 
us and the skirmish line voices were 
heard. The watchful major anxiously 
asked : " What is that ? Who is talk- 
ing out there ? *' One of the men 
answered, " Major, it is only some t>^ 
the boys having a prayer-meeting ; '" 



128 The Household of the 

and the major says that instantly, in 
place of his fears and vexation, a feeling 
of deep thankfulness came over him as 
he thought of the prayers ascending for 
us all on the verge of battle. 

There was a young soldier in our 
company to whom his mother, when 
she parted from him, gave a little book 
of daily Scripture selections. She said 
to him : " I have another just like this 
and we will both read the same verses 
every day." The soldier kept true tryst 
with his absent mother and, no matter 
where he was read his text every day. 
As we lay in the sunken road on that 
fateful morning after the moonlight 
prayer-meeting and the bullets began 
to speak their deadly whispers in our 
ears and we were all feeling the chill 
and dread of the plunge into battle, he 
opened his little book. The text for 
the day was, " Fear not, for I am with 
thee ; be not dismayed, for I am thy 



Hundred Thousand 129 

God ! " He has told me that if a voice 
from heaven had spoken it could not 
have been more clear, and for the re- 
mainder of that terrible day all fear was 
gone. 

We believed in our cause, in the war, 
and in final victory ; but we were not 
soldiers for the love of it. The end of 
fighting and home was the goal of the 
hope of the army — a vain hope to 
thousands of us, yet the star that beck- 
oned us all forward. How eagerly our 
thoughts turned northward might be 
seen on mail days. Letters came with 
varying regularity ; in settled camp we 
could generally count on them, but in 
times of active campaign mails were un- 
certain and when one arrived it was 
pathetic to see the wave of expectation 
that would sweep through the ranks. 
Often a cheer would go up when the 
postman with mail bags slung across 
his horse, came in sight. Then there 

9 



130 The Household of the 

was impatient waiting until the letters 
for the company came down from head- 
quarters and an anxious crowd around 
the captain as he called them off. The 
disappointment of those who received 
none was often pitiful. You would 
hear one and another say : " Captain, 
is n*t there one for me ? '* " Captain, 
are you sure ? I know I ought to have 
one this time." 

Then, tired and hungry as we were 
after the day's march, supper would go 
untasted until we could read the news 
from home ; and long afterward by our 
camp-fires we would talk it over ; and 
you might hear letterless Tom come to 
Bill and ask, " What does your wife say 
about my folks ? Has she seen them 
lately ? Are they all well ? " The most 
of us would read our letters with quiet 
gladness ; but now and then you might 
see some poor fellow bending with tear- 
stained face over his message from home 



II 



Hundred Thousand 131 

and hear his comrades saying in hushed 
tones of sympathy, " Jim has bad news ; 
his Httle girl is dead." 

The outgoing mail was far lighter 
than the incoming : we wrote under 
difficulties ; yet there were times when 
the whole camp seemed filled with 
scribes. But our letters were apt to be 
brief, and when any important move- 
ment was at hand we knew that they 
Would not be promptly forwarded. In- 
convenient information sometimes trav- 
elled in army letters. 

Our turn at picket duty w^as, with 
some of us, a favourite time for writing 
up our correspondence. In pleasant 
weather it was only at the outposts that 
the work was trying. "On the re- 
serve," or even " the support," we had 
only' to hold ourselves in readiness for 
emergencies. Picket duty was often a 
positively enjoyable change from the 
monotony of camp. When fires were 



132 The Household of the 

allowed we would fell great oaks for 
the mere fun of it, cut off their tops and 
branches for our fire and let the trunks 
lie. War is wasteful in ways little 
thought of Yet the scars of the picket 
posts were as nothing compared with 
the deserts made by the great camps. 

But picket duty must be done regard- 
less of weather, and at the outposts no 
fires were permitted at any time. I 
remember once leaving camp in a snow- 
storm which, by the time we reached 
our post had changed into a cold rain. 
Night was falling, we had no tents, 
none were allowed on the picket line ; 
but a German comrade and I managed 
to prop up a rubber blanket upon 
sticks so that it gave a scanty shelter 
from the rain, and as we crept under it 
my friend exclaimed, " Ach, here dees 
is nice under an injun-rubber himmel ! " 

Some of the nights on the picket line 
will always dwell in my memory. There 



Hundred Thousand 133 

was one when our post was in the heart 
of a forest of giant pines. A wild north- 
wester was blowing and its elfin music 
roared among the tree-tops as if the 
myriad spirits of the power of the air 
were let loose. Yet down below where 
we stood, all was peace ; not a breath 
stirred the feathery branches or the soft 
carpet of pine-needles under our feet. 
Even now I can feel the deep and 
solemn repose, the sense of mighty, 
restful shelter from the war of elements 
with which the shadowy forest pillars 
enwrapped us. 

During our winter in camp along the 
Rappahannock the only danger on the 
picket line was from bushwhackers. 
But nothing is more trying to the nerves 
than the chance of being picked off in 
the dark by unseen skulkers. In the 
face of the enemy it is different : you 
then expect to be shot at and to shoot. 
It is far more dangerous, but scarcely 



134 The Household of the 

less exciting. Soldiers are not fond of 
picket work, but they hate the monot- 
onous restraint and night work of 
ordinary and yet perfectly safe camp- 
guard duty. A common punishment 
for slight delinquencies is to give a man 
an extra turn on guard. Severe punish- 
ments, such as " ball and chain," or 
even tying a man up by the thumbs so 
that his feet barely touch the ground 
were not uncommon, though I am glad 
to say that this cruel torture was never 
permitted in our own and many other 
regiments. 

One night I was serjeant of the guard 
at brigade headquarters. The guard- 
house was a log building divided by 
a loosely built partition with wide crev- 
ices into two rooms : one for the guard, 
the other for a prison, in which at that 
time three deserters were confined. My 
duty compelled me to keep awake, and 
the prisoners, with the shadow of the 



Hundred Thousand 135 

death-penalty upon them spent the 
whole night in talk. 

Without heeding the guard, they laid 
bare their lives to each other as men 
will sometimes do when the end seems 
near. They talked about their families 
— one at least was a married man — and 
about the doings of younger days when 
they were boys on the farm, and they 
seemed to hunt out every bit of wrong 
or shame in their lives as though it 
must be confessed, at least to each 
other. One of them was evidently a 
very decent man ; but another, who 
had been a Serjeant in his regiment and 
plainly the ring-leader, was, judging from 
his talk a desperado. Once, after he 
had told of some wild deed he said : 
" But I have done worse things than 
that ; things that would hang me if they 
were known.'* Then, in answer to an 
inquiry of his companions : " No, I 
won't tell you even now about that." 



136 The Household of the 

In the morning I saw this man. He 
was strikingly handsome, a most sol- 
dierly-looking fellow. He talked with 
me freely and pleasantly ; there was 
something fascinating about him. 

The deserters were not shot. With 
sentence suspended they were replaced 
in the ranks and told that, if they did 
their duty the next time their regiment 
was called into action, they would be 
pardoned. 

Shortly afterward came the bloody 
but brilliant little battle at Franklin's 
Crossing. In the first boat which left 
the shore — the same in which our noble 
Captain D — — was killed — was the 
dare-devil ex-serjeant. Before the boat 
reached the opposite bank he was out 
of it, and without waiting for any one, 
he rushed straight at the enemy's earth- 
work alone. We expected to see him 
drop, but he bore a charmed life ; he 
was one of the first to enter the works. 



Hundred Thousand 137 

and by sheer boldness he brought 
off half-a-dozen prisoners and coolly 
marched them before him to the rear. 

We never saw a military execution ; 
but that which I remember as the sad- 
dest scene of our army life was the 
degradation of an officer. He had 
been condemned for cowardice before 
the enemy. 

The division was drawn up in a great 
hollow square, and the officer in full 
uniform was marched under guard into 
the centre where all could see him. 
There in loud tones the finding of the 
court-martial and its sentence were read, 
after which the adjutant approached the 
condemned officer, tore off his shoulder- 
straps, took his sword from him, ran it 
halfway into the ground and broke it 
before his face. The guard then closed 
about the disgraced and degraded man 
and marched him away. 

I had never seen him before — he 



138 The Household of the 

was from another brigade — but as he 
passed near and I could look into the 
deathly pale face of that young man 
with the heart-break of despair written 
on every feature, I said to myself, 
" This is a hundred times worse than 
death " ; and I found myself wildly 
wishing that he had been shot dead in 
battle ! When the parade was dis- 
missed we went back to our quarters in 
awe-struck silence, broken only by ex- 
pressions of deep compassion. 

In strong contrast with this, the 
grandest and most impressive scene we 
witnessed was the review of the army 
by President Lincoln. 

It was on a dull wintry day. We 
marched several miles from our camp 
before we came, early in the morning 
to the reviewing ground, which was a 
vast, desolate, open space, mostly level 
but with little hillocks here and there. 
Upon one of these we halted waiting 



Hundred Thousand 139 

for the mustering of the gathering host. 
For hours the dark lines of men in blue 
poured in from every direction until 
all the plain and every little hilltop was 
alive with them. 

For six or seven months we had been 
members of the great army ; we had 
shared its toils and perils, we had lived 
its life, we had felt the throbbing of its 
mighty pulse in our own blood, we had 
been part of its long line of battle ; yet 
we had never as yet seen the assembly 
of our brethren in arms. Now the 
plain was growing black with them ; a 
hundred thousand men were forming 
in apparently solid masses, the battle- 
flags of the regiments waving close to- 
gether. 

The scene was the more impressive 
because there were no idle spectators. 
This was no gala day for curious, gaz- 
ing, merry-making crowds, and brilliant 
costumes, and feasting and huzzas ; but 



140 The Household of the 

solemnly, silently save for the meas- 
ured tramp of battalions and the rolling 
of the drums a nation's strength was 
massing as if to weigh itself, to feel itself 
and ask its own soul if it were fit for 
the mighty work and the awful sacrifices 
awaiting it. 

We could not know then that Chan- 
cellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, 
Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, 
written across the scroll of a short two 
years to come were holding in their 
fateful though glorious names the doom 
of death or wounds for more in number 
than all the thousands of us who beheld 
each other that day. But we felt that 
a heavy-laden future was swiftly coming 
toward us ; we could almost hear the 
rustling of her wings in the air of the 
leaden sky under which, apart from 
the world, alone with ourselves and 
God, we stood a great brotherhood of 
consecrated service. 



Hundred Thousand 141 

But now our moment has come. We 
take our place in the moving ranks. 
We marched in close column with 
double company front, so that each 
regiment took up small space. As we 
neared the reviewing stand the tall figure 
of Lincoln loomed up. He was on 
horseback and his severely plain, black 
citizen^s dress set him in bold relief 
against the crowd of generaU in full 
uniform grouped behind him. Distin- 
guished men were among them ; but 
we had no eyes save for our revered 
President, the Commander-in-Chief of 
the Army, the brother of every soldier, 
the great leader of a nation in its hour 
of trial. There was no time save for a 
marching salute ; the occasion called 
for no cheers. Self-examination, not 
glorification had brought the army and 
its chief together ; but we passed close 
to him so that he could look into our 
faces and we into his. 



142 The Household of the 

None of us to our dying day can 
forget that countenance ! From its 
presence we marched directly onward 
toward our camp and as soon as 
" route step " was ordered and the men 
were free to talk they spoke thus to 
each other : " Did you ever see such a 
look on any man's face ? *' " He is 
bearing the burdens of the nation." 
" It is an awful load ; it is killing him." 
" Yes, that is so ; he is not long for this 
world!" 

Concentrated in that one great, strong 
yet tender face, the agony of the life or 
death struggle of the hour was revealed 
as we had never seen it before. With 
new understanding we knew why we 
were soldiers. 



A Little Battle 

THE great battles of a war like 
ours absorb the attention of 
historians ; yet scattered between these 
grand climacterics, like local squalls or 
thunder-showers in the intervals of 
sweeping storms, there were hundreds 
of little, unrecorded fights which, to 
those who felt their fury often meant 
almost as much as the main tempests. 
We found it so in the very last affair 
in which our regiment took part. Our 
term of service was all but ended. The 
men who had been detailed as clerks 
at headquarters, teamsters, ambulance 
drivers etc., had been sent back to 
their companies in anticipation of our 
speedy mustering out; everything 



144 A Little Battle 

seemed quiet along the Rappahannock ; 
we reckoned our battles all fought and 
dared at last to believe that home-go- 
ing for those who were left of us was 
actually a possibility. " Home again !" 
— it was all we talked of by day, it 
coloured our dreams by night as we 
slept in our pleasant camp under the 
summer moon. 

When therefore, early on a June 
morning the command came to strike 
tents and prepare to move, a thrill 
of expectation went with it through 
the regiment. But our vision of home 
quickly melted as we saw the stir of 
preparation spreading like an advanc- 
ing wave into all the regiments about 
us, and its last pathetic remnants were 
rudely blotted out by the distribution 
of the ominous twenty extra rounds 
of cartridge. We handled them gin- 
gerly, none too willingly, for they 
said to us, "Not home this time. 



A Little Battle 145 

boys, — battle once more first; some 
of you will never see home/* 

Late in the afternoon a short march 
brought our division to the hills above 
the fateful river ; for the third time we 
beheld sleepy old Fredericksburg away 
at our right, and directly before us the 
familiar amphitheatre of fields shut in 
by distant hills. It seemed incredible 
that twice within six months trampling 
armies had here been locked in the 
bloody embrace of mighty battle ; no 
more peaceful sight could be imagined 
than those gently rolling, grassy plains 
with their crown of wooded, leafy up- 
land all bathed in the slanting rays of 
sweet June afternoon sunshine. 

A single suspicious blot marred the 

landscape. Opposite where we stood, 

at the farther side of the river guarding 

our old crossing place, the yellow mound 

of a freshly dug earthwork loomed up ; 

yet for all we could see it might have 
10 



146 A Little Battle 

been a great grave, so silent, so appar- 
ently lifeless was it. 

But there was no lingering for the 
view. Down the hill we went, out 
over the level ground beneath, and 
from every side we could see the dark 
lines pouring over the slopes until, with 
swift and silent precision the division 
was formed in battle array. In a few 
moments as if by magic the northern 
side of the river valley had become 
alive with the presence of a sternly- 
marshalled host. 

The southern side also awoke. Out 
from a distant grove a Confederate 
regiment, the support of the as-yet- 
invisible picket line came forth. We 
could see the sheen of their rifles flash- 
ing in the sunshine as they hastened 
toward the earthwork. 

As yet not a shot had been fired 
and scarce a sound was heard; even 
the tramp of marching feet and the 



A Little Battle 147 

rumble of artillery wheels was muffled 
by the soft, grassy ground. I can feel 
even now the queer sensation of un- 
reality, as though it were all a gigantic 
pantomime, or some eerie flitting of 
armies of ghosts. 

But appearances could not deceive 
us. We knew too well the Spirit of 
the Place ; we waited its arousal with 
grave expectation. The feeling in our 
ranks was picturesquely expressed by 
a stuttering little fellow in our com- 
pany when, as we halted for a few mo- 
ments on the hills above and watched 
the silent river and apparently- deserted 
plain and hills, some one ventured 
the rash opinion that the enemy had 
decamped. The stammerer quickly re- 
plied : 

" You j-just g-g-go ov-ver and s-stir 
up the hive, and the b-b-bees will c-come 
out f-fast enough ! " 

That river had always been a River 



148 A Little Battle 

of Death whenever we had crossed it. 
Were we to prove it once more ? The 
question in our hearts was answered 
when the pontoon train with its long 
line of great boat-laden waggons issued 
from our ranks and, like an enormous 
snake began to wind its way toward 
the river, its head plunging downwards 
and disappearing in the hidden road 
leading to the water's edge. Pontoons 
at the front always meant bloody busi- 
ness in those Rappahannock days. 
The illusion, the silence before the 
storm, is at an end. Hark! There 
is a rattle of rifles from the other side. 
With it another clatter and roar, as 
from our side three batteries gallop 
forth, wheel near the edge of the ra- 
vine in which the river flows, unlimber, 
and quicker than it takes to tell, crash ' 
crash ! crash ! the volleys from eighteen 
cannon rend the evening air. Through 
sudden clouds of white smoke red 



A Little Battle 149 

flashes dart like savage tongues of 
wild beasts, the gunners leap like 
demons to and fro in apparent fury, 
yet really with mechanical precision 
as they load and fire, reload and fire 
again. A little breeze lifts the veil 
of smoke, through the rift we catch a 
gHmpse of the earthwork beyond the 
river ; it is an inferno of bursting shells 
and clouds of dust. Woe to the men 
behind that torn and fire-scorched 
mound ! We knew there could be but 
few of them at most ; they had no 
artillery with which to answer ours, it 
seemed in truth like crushing mos- 
quitoes with a sledge-hammer. Yet 
the crossing of a deep river in face of 
even a few determined opposers is 
always a ticklish piece of work and 
our commander meant to take no 
chances. The thunderous strokes of 
eighteen cannon are not too much to 
make the task of the engineers who 



150 A Little Battle 

must lay the bridge a safe one ; 
whether even such ponderous defence 
is sufficient we are soon to see. 

Our attention had been riveted upon 
the scene before us and we failed to 
notice that our colonel had been called 
away by a message from the com- 
mander of the brigade, but as he gal- 
loped back one look into his grave, 
determined face was enough. We 
knew what was coming before the 
sharp command rang out. " Atten- 
tion, battalion ! Forward, double quick, 
march ! " 

In battle, events arrive suddenly. 
You learn to expect it thus, yet like 
the final summons to a slowly dying 
man the order which sends you into 
the vortex of fire is apt to come with 
a shock of surprise. To us at that 
moment the surprise was the more 
keen because home-going instead of 
battle had so lately been our prospect. 



A Little Battle 1 5 1 

and least of all had we dreamed that, 
out of a dozen regiments we would be 
the first called upon for specially 
perilous duty. But that curious elec- 
tric thrill which comes with the battle 
order, which merges your individual 
consciousness into the composite con- 
sciousness of a regiment sent us for- 
ward, and before we could fairly ask 
ourselves what it all meant, we were 
swiftly moving toward the river by 
the road over which the pontoons had 
passed. We had travelled that road 
before, we knew it well. At the edge 
of the plateau it turns sharply and 
descends by a dug way in the steep 
bank parallel with the stream to a 
small piece of open level ground close 
by the water; and when we reached 
the turn of the road where we could 
look down, a glance showed what the 
din of the cannonade had concealed. 
The earthwork was but part of the 



152 A Little Battle 

defence of the crossing. Below the 
line of our battery fire, out of reach of 
its shells, was a row of rifle-pits manned 
by sharpshooters who were doing deadly 
work. A few of the pontoon boats were 
on the ground close to the water, but 
none of them were launched ; the train 
was in disorder, the engineers were 
being shot down at every attempt to 
handle their boats and our task was 
clearly before us. With another regi- 
ment from the brigade which was 
coming down by a different route 
through a little ravine, we must force 
the passage of the river. It began 
to be hot work as soon as we reached 
the dug way. Even now I can 
hear the waspish buzz of bullets, and 
feel the sting of the gravel sent into 
my face, as they rip through the 
ground at my feet. It was hotter 
still on the little flat when two regi- 
ments quickly arriving and huddled 



A Little Battle 153 

together with boats, waggons, and en- 
gineers, filled every inch of space. We 
could not return the enemy's fire and 
our closely packed crowd oflTered a 
pitifully easy mark for those sharp- 
shooters only a hundred yards away. 

But many strong hands were now 
heaving at the boats, in spite of the 
fire and of falling men, three or four 
of them were quickly launched. Then 
there is a moment of desperate confu- 
sion, no one responds to the frantic 
but unfamiliar orders of ofiicers to " Get 
into those boats ! " when out of the 
crowd one man springs forth, leaps to 
the gunwale of one of the boats and 
waving his gun high In the air cries, 
" Come on, boys ! " It Is Corporal Joe. 
Instantly the boat Is filled, pushed off 
from the bank, and the engineers with 
their big oars begin to row out Into 
the stream. Another boat quickly fol- 
lows, and soon a flotilla of seven of 



154 A Little Battle 

these great scows, deeply laden, bris- 
tling with bayonets, is making such 
speed as is possible for such awkward 
craft toward the opposite shore. The 
bullets now patter like hail upon the 
water; a few strike the boats or the 
men in them, but the fire slackens as 
we near the bank. Our opposers were 
too few to resist us when once we 
landed, and they began to scatter. Some 
ran from the rifle-pits toward the earth- 
work, others disappeared through the 
bushes. Before the shore was fairly 
reached our men sprang out into the 
water and waded to the land, the boats 
were emptied quicker than they had 
been filled; no one paused to fire ; there 
was a pell-mell rush of bayonet charge 
up the river bank straight at the earth- 
work. It was a race between our men 
and the Vermonters, and to this day it 
has been a matter of friendly dispute 
as to which regiment first entered the 



A Little Battle 155 

enemy's works. But it was all quickly 
over. The cannonade, which ceased 
only when our charge began, had half 
buried and almost wholly paralysed the 
defenders of the little fort, only a few 
feeble shots met us and we took nearly 
eighty prisoners ~ all who were left 
alive when we entered. 

There were some ghastly sights in- 
side that yellow mound. A Confed- 
erate officer, torn by one of our shells 
lay dying ; the captain of our company 
sprang to his side, raised him tenderly, 
gave him a drink from his canteen and 
tried to soothe his passing moments. 
But it was surprising how few of the 
defenders had been killed. The worst 
complaint of those brave men was that 
they thought our batteries meant to 
bury them alive ! 

We suffered far more severely. Our 
own regiment lost nineteen, the engi- 
neers between thirty and forty, and the 



156 A Little Battle 

Vermonters, who had come down to 
the river by a difficult though sheltered 
path, five or six : the cost of the cross- 
ing was between fifty and sixty men. 
I think it took not more than ten or 
fifteen minutes to fight our little battle, 
but those minutes were crowded with 
incidents. I have mentioned that of 
the dying Confederate officer. The 
handful of brave fellows who held 
that crossing so manfully, who made 
its conquest so dear to us, were heroes. 
We had naught but respect — nay, ad- 
miration — for them. It came to be j 
always so. There was never a war \ 
fought more sternly, yet with less bitter- * 
ness between those who met each other 1 
on bloody fields. Bank's Ford came 
only a month before Franklin's Cross- 
ing ; there, too, we took a number of 
prisoners. I shall never forget the talk 
with a group of them as we sat down 
together. If you could have seen us 



I 



A Little Battle 157 

you would have found it hard to be- 
lieve that a few moments ago we had 
been firing into each other's faces. At 
the conclusion of our friendly chat, one 
of those Confederates said : — 

" Well, boys, this war has got to be 
fought out. You must be good soldiers 
and do your duty, and we must do the 
same ! " 

On our side two incidents were pa- 
thetic in their tragedy. 

Among the killed was a private, a 
plain man to whom writing was a task. 
A few days before we marched he had 
managed to send a letter to his wife 
telling her that we would soon be at 
home. That was the last she heard 
from him, and when a few weeks later 
the regiment marched into the streets 
of his native city, the wife stood on 
the sidewalk waiting to welcome her 
husband. Some one had to take her 
away and tell her that he was dead. 



158 A Little Battle 

Another of the killed was our senior 
captain. Before the days of labour 
troubles, when master and men worked 
side by side, he was owner of a manu- 
factory, a man beloved by all his fellow- 
citizens, and not least by the men who 
worked under him. He was near mid- 
dle age, of peaceful tastes, without mil- 
itary aspirations, and enlisted only 
because of a strong sense of duty. He 
knew his example would be followed, 
he could multiply himself thus. Work- 
men and neighbours flocked about him; 
he had been their captain in industry, 
they made him their captain in war. 
He might have been a field officer, but 
he judged himself unfit. To serve his 
country where he could serve best was 
his only ambition. There were smarter 
officers in the regiment, but none so be- 
loved as this noble Christian the light 
of whose example shone ever with 
bright and benignant ray. 



A Little Battle 159 

When we went down to the river 

that day, Captain D *s company 

led the line and filled the first boat. 
The enemy's fire was at its hottest 
when they were shoved off. Caring 
always for others more than for him- 
self, he commanded his men to lie down 
and shelter themselves, but his perilous 
duty was to direct the rowers and guide 
the course of the fleet. He stood up 
to do it better. The risk was fatal ; 
his commanding figure became the 
mark for many rifles, and he fell be- 
fore we were half way across. 

Such a death for such a man was 
nothing less than martyrdom, all the 
harder because he knew that hundreds 
of hearts were eagerly counting the 
hours that lay between him and a joy- 
ful welcome home. But our dear cap- 
tain was a type. There were hundreds 
like him in our army who never reached 
home. 



i6o A Little Battle 

In the same boat with the heroic 
captain was a man from the other re- 
giment who had been a deserter. His 
conduct in action was to determine his 
fate. How he managed to get into 
that first boat I do not know. He 
must have run far ahead of his own 
company, but when we neared shore he 
sprang out where the water was waist 
deep and, waiting for no one, charged 
alone up the bank. It looked like 
sure death ; but he escaped unhurt, and 
I believe was the very first to enter the 
enemy's works. Of course he secured 
his pardon. 

In every battle there are a few heroes 
of the type with which Stephen Crane 
has made us familiar, whose ingenuity 
in finding safe places is amusing, and 
whose antics make life a burden to offi- 
cers and file-closers. When we reached 
the boat-landing the ground was abso- 
lutely bare ; there was not a bush, or 



A Little Battle i6i 

tree, or rock ; the only possible shelter 
from the leaden hail was a spring, — a 
mere mud hole, perhaps three feet in 
diameter. By lying down and curling 
himself up in the mud and water a man 
might fit into it. If the desirability of 
land is the measure of its value, then 
that mud hole was priceless, for it was 
occupied every minute and each occu- 
pant was envied by other would-be 
tenants. As I came down the hill I 
saw one of these fellows who had just 
been routed out. A bullet had pierced 
his arm as he rose from his muddy bed, 
and he was dancing with pain, clasp- 
ing his wounded arm with his un- 
hurt hand and muttering angry curses 
upon the officer who had disturbed 
his repose. The vacant place was in- 
stantly taken by an old gray-bearded 
fellow from my own company. Over 
him stood the major, punching the 

man with his sword, and accentuate 
II 



1 62 A Little Battle 

ing each prod with an appropriate 
remark. 

" Come, Peter [a prod], get out of 
this [prod] ; your life is not worth any- 
more than mine ! " (final prod). And 
Peter slowly arose. It makes me laugh 
now, as it did then, to see his white, 
scared face gazing agape at the major, 
the mud and water dripping in fes- 
toons from his hair, his beard, and his 
clothes. 

When we were half way across the 
stream a bullet struck the oar of one 
of our rowers, close to his hand with 
sharp ping and shock. For an instant 
the man seemed paralysed ; he stopped 
rowing and our boat's head swung 
round, threatening collision with the 
craft beside us. In that other boat 
was a red-haired captain, a fiery little 
Irish gamecock. Quick as thought 
he grasped the situation, and leaning 
far over the gunwale with uplifted 



i 



A Little Battle 163 

sword, he hissed at the frightened 
oarsman : — 

" Row, damn you, or I *11 cut your 
headofF!" 

Never can I forget the appealing 
glance of the poor fellow at that im- 
pending sword, nor his sudden trans- 
formation from helpless inertness to 
desperate energy. 

After the capture of the earthwork, 
without waiting for the laying of the 
bridge and the crossing of other troops, 
our regiment was advanced in skirmish- 
ing order far out across the plain, until 
as night fell our line was established in 
front of the ruins of the Bernard Man- 
sion. That night on the skirmish line 
is one of the pleasantest memories of 
my army life, but its story belongs 
elsewhere. 

The last fight of our regiment had 
been fought. We were proud of our 
victory, and though the little battle is 



164 



A Little Battle 



barely noticed in military histories, it 
has an interest which makes it mem- 
orable to those who were there. It 
was the prelude of a great drama. The 
advance of our division of the Sixth 
Corps was a reconnaissance in force with 
the object of checking, if possible, Lee*s 
northward movement, and in our little 
battle at Franklin's Crossing at the 
Rappahannock, the first blood of the 
great Gettysburg campaign was shed. 



1 



One Young Soldier 

THE generous sentiment which 
would crown every one who 
fell in our Great War with the hero's 
wreath may be excessive, yet a personal 
acquaintance with almost any random 
portion of that enormous death-roll 
will certainly make one feel that its 
length is its least significance. 

Not long ago I made a pilgrimage to 
my native village. Of course the old 
cemetery had to be visited. I knew 
the place was full of ghosts of other 
days, but a strange thrill went through 
me as I found the frequent stones 
inscribed with the names of former 
schoolmates or comrades who had 
fallen in the war. 



1 66 One Young Soldier 

Here was one that said, " Captain 
R. S 5 stafF-officer — killed at the bat- 
tle of the Wilderness." The silent stone 
recalled dear friends and neighbours and 
the sacrifice of their only son, the most 
high-spirited and pluckiest young fellow 
in the town, one of those ready and re- 
sourceful characters to whom the word 
" impossible " is a stranger. A little 
farther on, under the shadow of ancient 
cedars, were two marble shafts. One 
bore the name of gentle, reticent, but 

forceful W. P , and the fateful words, 

"Fell at the Battle of Bull Run." 
How memory brings back the rush of 
feeling with which the tidings of his 
death came to us, his schoolmates from 
whom he had so lately parted ! 

The other monument, in its simple 
uprightness, seemed a fit memorial for 

a knightly soul. Noble Harry B ! 

We who knew him said to ourselves, 
How can the world spare such as he ! 



One Young Soldier 167 

But the legend on the marble told how 
he met his death while in command of 
a battery in Sheridan's great fight at 
Cedar Creek. 

I wandered on till I came to an hum- 
ble stone whose rudely pathetic inscrip- 
tion, telling how it was " erected to his 
memory by his wife/* touched me 

deeply. Bluff, hearty Henry H was 

one of my own company who fell on the 
bloody field of Salem Heights. Just a 
plain man, only a private, no conspic- 
uous hero, yet one of those faithfully 
courageous souls who, when thick-flying 
bullets are droning their deadly song, 
and the scorching breath of battle tries 
the line, never give captain or file- 
closers a moment's anxiety. You could 
always depend upon " Hank " to stand 
like a rock with his face to the foe, and 
to waste no shots on empty air. And 
one reason for the Homeric deadlinessof 
our war was that both in the brown-clad 



1 68 One Young Soldier 

ranks of the Southrons and among the 
blue-coated Men of the North there 
were thousands like him. 

I turned from the place in pensive 
mood. Remembering the awful har- 
vest of great battle-fields I said to my- 
self: Only a small fraction of it is 
planted in such peaceful places as this, 
yet this is a fair example of its lesson. 
Every village graveyard throughout our 
broad land tells the same story. Death 
waited with grim confidence for the 
choice spirits in that war, and the best 
of us who took our share in it are not 
those who live to tell its story. 

Then thought travelled afar to the 
banks of the Rappahannock and its 
camps and battle-fields. I dreamed 
that once more I stood amid the famil- 
iar, blue-clad throng, yet there was a 
difference. Past and present seemed to 
mingle. Here and there a face would 
vanish or a well-remembered voice fail, 



One Young Soldier 169 

grow faint and far off, or suddenly be- 
come silent, and among these one, the 
first sought for, the most desired, the 
face and voice of my tent-mate. I 
awoke from my dream, remembering 
that he, too, now belongs to the army 
of the nobly fallen. 

But ours was no common friendship. 
We had been schoolmates before we be- 
came comrades, then tent-mates, finally 
brothers like David and Jonathan. 

We slept under one blanket; we 
shared our rations and our confidences ; 
and if we did not fight side by side, that 
was in part because he was corporal at 
the right of the first platoon and my 
place was at the other end of the line, 
but also in part because he had a way 
of doing such startlingly original things 
in the face of danger. 

His image rises before me now. 
There he stands, tall, erect, balanced on 
one foot while he nervously taps the 



1 70 One Young Soldier 

ground with the other and looks at 
me with that mocking expression all 
his own, that premonitory grin pro- 
voked by some latent jest upon my 
moralising. 

This bantering trick, so common with 
him, breaking out as it often did at 
most unexpected and often atrociously 
inappropriate moments, was an index of 
the side of his character most open to 
the general eye. Joe was but eighteen 
years old when he enlisted, just the 
age when the boy is passing into the 
man ; a good six feet in stature, with- 
out an ounce of spare flesh, long armed, 
loose-jointed, at once too undeveloped 
and too full of individuality to wear any 
conventional garb with ease, so that 
Uncle Sam*s shop-made and ill-fitting 
uniform hung upon his youthful but 
powerful frame with anything but mar- 
tial impressiveness. This, however, 
troubled him little. An undue care for 



One Young Soldier 171 

appearance was never one of his foibles, 
and the pomp and circumstance of war 
always smote his keen Yankee sense of 
the ludicrous. Yet he had withal the 
manner and the heart of a gentleman, 
and if you looked into those merry yet 
piercing eyes, or listened for five min- 
utes to the original ideas expressed by 
that well modulated and pleasant voice 
with just a suspicion of " away-down- 
East " accent in it, you would be com- 
pelled to feel that in this boy there was 
the making of no common man. 

For a long time Joe was a puzzle to 
his comrades. They could not under- 
stand why such a great boy, and one 
too, so unmilitary in his ways, should 
be a corporal. Some of the older men 
resented it. And then, his persistent 
practical joking, his careless independ- 
ence and smiling indifference to rebuke 
or criticism was perplexing, not to say 
exasperating. Yet no one could posi- 



172 One Young Soldier 

lively dislike him. He might be pro- 
voking at times, yet every one knew him 
incapable of anything mean, and his 
untiring good-nature and open-handed 
generosity made warm friends for him 
from the very start. 

The captain certainly showed himself 
a good judge of men when he made Joe 
a corporal, though it took time to jus- 
tify the choice, and the honours of office 
sat but lightly upon the recipient Not 
until our days of battle came did Joe 
show any care for military distinction, 
and he never bothered himself about 
the promotion which others sought so 
eagerly. 

As everybody knows, the corporal's 
rank is lowest in the company, only a 
step above the position of a private, and 
the distinguishing badge is that of the 
"chevrons," two triangular stripes on 
the sleeves of the coat. So little did 
Corporal Joe prize his office that he 



One Young Soldier 173 

would not at first wear these; but the 
time speedily came when he found them 
desirable. We were hurried into the 
field, and when at Hagerstown in Mary- 
land we joined the brigade to which we 
were assigned, we found ourselves in 
a strictly guarded camp. The men 
were allowed to pass the gates only in 
squads in charge of a non-commissioned 
officer. And now Joe, seeing that the 
chevrons might be useful, instead of 
applying to the commissary for a regu- 
lation set, cut strips of light blue from 
the skirt of his overcoat and rudely 
sewed them on the sleeve of one arm 
only. Then he proceeded to the gate 
and attempted to pass the guard, who 
of course stopped him. 

" You have no non-commissioned 
officer with you. Only a squad in 
charge of a serjeant or corporal can 
pass.'* 

Joe held out the newly adorned 



174 One Young Soldier 

arm, exclaiming, " Is not that corporal 
enough for you ? " 

The guard, a member of a veteran 
regiment, was perplexed yet obdurate. 

"Yes, you may be a corporal, but 
where is your squad ? " 

Quick as a flash Joe wheeled and 
showed the other, the plain coat- 
sleeve. 

" There ! Is n't that squad enough 
for you ? " 

And then the lieutenant in command 
of the guard, who had watched the 
whole performance broke into a hearty 
laugh and said, — 

" You may pass. We will let you 
go as a non-commissioned squad.'* 

It is to be feared that Joe was, for a 
long time, a thorn in the side of some 
of our company officers. Indeed I do 
not think that our orderly serjeant, 
a very business-like and soldierly Ger- 
man with a prejudice against the loose 



One Young Soldier 175 

ways of our volunteer service, ever 
became reconciled to him. 

We were a hastily enlisted regiment, 
and were rushed to the front and into 
active service imperfectly equipped. 
Our arms were at first old Harper's 
Ferry muskets with locks converted 
from flint to percussion. Want of re- 
spect for these antique weapons made 
us too careless of their condition : a 
grave military fault which was a grief 
and vexation to the orderly and also 
to our conscientious first lieutenant. 
At "inspection'* one morning that 
officer found fault, justly enough, with 
Joe's gun. Taking it from its owner 
and holding it out before us all, he 
said sternly, — 

" Corporal, what sort of an example is 
this to set before the company ? Look 
at the disgraceful condition of this mus- 
ket ! — of what use would such a weapon 
be if we should be called into action ? " 



176 One Young Soldier 

With his peculiar and provoking grin, 
and in that bland and childUke tone 
which he assumed so readily, Joe im- 
pudently answered, — 

" Why, lieutenant, if we get into a 
fight I expect to rely on my bayonet !** 

Looking back upon this and similar 
incidents of our earlier service, I often 
wonder how Joe kept his chevrons at 
all. But when the stress of hard ser- 
vice came and we entered the toil and 
hardship of the march through the 
enemy's country, Joe's real quality be- 
gan to make itself felt too strongly, 
both by men and officers, to make it 
worth while, or indeed safe, to notice 
his little irregularities ; for whoever else 
lagged or straggled it was never Joe; 
no matter how dangerous or disagreea- 
ble the picket or fatigue duty he was 
never the one to shirk or complain. 
The officers found that for real service 
here was one man absolutely dependa- 



One Young Soldier 177 

ble ; the men were braced by his cheerful 
example, and they discovered moreover 
that Joe was a good one to go to in 
trouble. Had an improvident comrade 
devoured his three days* rations prema- 
turely ? Joe was always ready to divide 
his own remaining hard-tack. Was 
some extra load to be carried, — an axe, 
for instance ? — he would cheerfully add 
it to his own. A sort of admiration 
for Joe began to appear, yet with reser- 
vations. For one thing there was no 
telling who would be the next victim of 
one of his pranks. Bill B remem- 
bers to this day how his supper was 
spoiled one evening by Joe's ghastly 
speculation about the method of the 
fattening of our pork. And I remem- 
ber a night on the picket reserve when 
a circle of men lay asleep with their 
feet toward the embers of a dying fire, 
and Joe, ever-wakeful, quietly stealing 
out of the group, gathered a mighty 



12 



1 78 One Young Soldier 

armful of dry brush, gently deposited 
it upon the coals, and as the blaze 
mounted and the heat grew fierce, 
amused himself with the contortions 
of the roasted-out sleepers and with 
their drowsy profanity as they gradu- 
ally awoke. He never swore himself, 
but I suspected at times that he took 
a sinful delight in the ingeniously blas- 
phemous explosions of some of his 
comrades. 

Then too, his ways were original. 
He had a genius for cookery, and the 
messes he concocted from meagre and 
sometimes unfamiliar materials were the 
wonder, and often the horror of his unso- 
phisticated and conservative comrades; 
yet he was strangely fastidious withal. 
Wher^ a too greedy or too careless 
commissariat sent us boxes of ancient 
hard-tack, mementoes of last year's 
campaign, marked " White House " or 
"Harrison's Landing," whose mouldy 



One Young Soldier 179 

contents were living exponents of the 
doctrine of evolution, Joe would not 
eat a single cracker without careful dis- 
section and removal of every inhabitant, 
though we were near starving. And 
though careless of outward appearances, 
he was rigid in certain personal habits. 
So the men thought when they saw 
how, even in the dead of winter, he 
would have his frequent bath, even if, 
he had to break the ice in some pond 
or stream for it. 

Moreover, there were times when his 
tireless cheerfulness and strength seemed 
discordant and untimely. When you 
have been marching all day loaded like 
a pack mule with knapsack, haversack, 
canteen, cartridge-box, and gun ; when 
every bone aches and every nerve is 
unstrung, it becomes an added bitter- 
ness to have in the ranks a mere boy 
whose vitality rises in jest and song 
above the common misery of stalwart 



i8o One Young Soldier 

men. At such times I have heard men 
swear at Joe with deep and apprehen- 
sive curses which showed that they felt 
him a little uncanny. 

But I knew him as few others did. 
A kinder tent-mate no man ever had; 
my heart melts even now when I re- 
call his unvarying gentleness and con- 
sideration ; how, often after a weary 
day's march when at last halt was called 
and arms stacked and fuel must be 
sought for the camp-fire, he would look 
at me with gravely compassionate eyes 
and say, "You take care of the duds 
and get the coffee-pot ready, and I *ll 
find the wood." Which meant, " Poor 
worn-out comrade, take it easy and rest, 
and let me do the work ! " — though 
I think he was never too tired to enjoy 
the charge on the nearest fence and the 
scrimmage for the often too scarce 
rails. And always in all our rude house- 
keeping he would take to himself more 



One Young Soldier 1 8 1 

than his share of the heaviest tasks. It 
was beautiful also to see his devotion 
to his absent father, between whom and 
himself an affectionate comradeship ex- 
isted which was none too common in 
those days. His letters, almost all of 
them to his father, were more frequent 
than those of any man in the company. 
Much of the time he wrote daily ; he 
used to say, " I keep my diary in this 
way." Under his light and effervescent 
manner there was strong and manly 
thoughtfulness which showed itself even 
in his jests. One of these is worth re- 
cording, not only as illustration of his 
originality, but for its inherent wisdom 
and its epigrammatic form. 

On the march through the Virginia 
hill country, foraging, though forbidden 
by general orders, became the fashion. 
This precisely suited Joe's enterprising 
disposition, and by his dashing raids 
upon pigs and chickens he made a name 



1 82 One Young Soldier 

for himself in the regiment. After one 
of these exploits, rather bolder than 
usual, a comrade whose conscience was 
tender in such matters ventured to 
remonstrate with him. The Suspen- 
sion of the Habeas Corpus Act was 
just then a subject of agitating discus- 
sion throughout the country and the 
camps, and I shall never forget either 
the finely simulated sternness or the 
remarkable adaptation of Joe's crushing 
reply to his scrupulous friend. 

" See here ! Don't you know that 
war is a suspension of the Ten Com- 
mandments ? " 

We could not but feel that there was 
something more than ordinary in this 
boy ; yet even his few intimates - — those 
who thought they knew him — were 
scarcely prepared for the revelation of 
his character which was to come with 
the test of battle. 

On the day when we stormed the 



One Young Soldier 183 

Marye*s Hill, after we had gained the 
crest and the foe was fleeing before us, 
we pushed on through the woods that 
crowned the height until we came sud- 
denly upon an open space dotted with 
the stumps of trees that had been felled 
for Confederate camp-fires. On the 
other side of this opening were two 
guns, the section of a battery which 
our enemies had hastily drawn up in a 
brave attempt to check our advance, 
and our captain had scarcely time to 
shout, " Lie down, quick ! " before 
a volley of grape-shot whizzed and 
hummed about us and laid several of 
our men low. The lieutenant-colonel 
called for volunteers, and a thin and 
hasty skirmish line disappeared among 
the stumps. Another volley of grape 
and another came, and then, far to the 
front, more than half way between us 
and the enemy two rifle shots rang out, 
and the captain of the battery fell. The 



1 84 One Young Soldier 

gunners, apparently dismayed at the 
loss of their commander and at such 
near and mysterious foes, hastily lim- 
bered up their pieces and hurried them 
away. We were as much astonished 
and mystified as they, until presently 
Joe, and a companion from another 
regiment whom he had picked up, 
rose from among the stumps and came 
sauntering into the line. Those two 
bold feDows had slipped out beyond 
the skirmish line, and, eyeing the enemy's 
guns like cats, they had dropped behind 
the stumps as soon as they saw the 
gunners about to fire ; then, when the 
grape ceased rattHng about them, up 
again and half running, half creeping, 
they had thus worked their way for- 
ward until they were within fifty yards 
of the battery ; then, watching their 
chance both aimed together at the cap- 
tain and brought him down. 

The colonel thanked Corporal Joe 



One Young Soldier 185 

before the regiment for silencing the 
battery, and that was all the reward he 
received, or indeed cared for. 

Absolute fearlessness is rare. Per- 
haps it does not exist in the heart of a 
sane man. The bravest are usually- 
like our heroic lieutenant-colonel, who, 
when an officer said to him one day, 
" Colonel, you don't seem to know 
what fear is," replied in his abrupt 
way,— 

" All a mistake. I am always afraid, 
miserably afraid, whenever I go Into 
battle, but of course it would never do 
to show it ! " 

Yet there are exceptional characters 
for whom the voice of the battle siren 
possesses irresistible fascination, — men 
whose overmastering delight in danger 
seems to scare their very fears and send 
them slinking away to hide in some 
obscure corner of their souls. After 
our days at Marye's Hill and Salem 



1 86 One Young Soldier 

Heights, we began to see such a man in 
Joe, and from that time onward his 
career, which was marked by a con- 
tinued series of daring exploits, con- 
firmed the judgment. Moreover, it 
was characteristic of the man that his 
peril-defying deeds were never the re- 
sult of any rage of battle. They were 
always either deliberately planned, or 
else the quick and cool acceptance of 
some desperate chance. 

It was my good fortune to be with 
him in one of the mildest of these 
adventures. After the brilliant affair 
at Franklin's Crossing just before the 
northward march of the army toward 
Gettysburg, our regiment was sent out 
beyond the captured earthworks as 
skirmishers. Night was coming on by 
the time our line was established, and 
we found ourselves in a romantic but 
risky position. 

We were occupying the grounds of 



One Young Soldier 187 

the old Bernard House. Across the 
broad driveways and once pleasant 
lawns and gardens, now neglected and 
weed-grown, we Northern invaders had 
stretched our picket line. Just behind 
us, its ruined and fire-stained walls 
touched with the mystery of moonlight, 
lay all that was left of the once proud 
mansion. In days not so very long 
gone by, on just such nights as this, 
those hospitable halls and the noble 
grounds had been alive with the festive 
gathering of Virginia's wit and beauty. 
Their spirits seemed to haunt the scene, 
so silent now save for the low-toned 
orders and warnings of our officers. 
In front of the ruined mansion stood a 
grove of ancient and noble oaks. They 
served to hide us, but they were not 
to be trusted. They also furnished a 
dangerous screen through which the 
enemy might easily come upon us 
unaware. So the lieutenant-coloneJ 



1 88 One Young Soldier 

evidently thought, for he came to our 
company and asked quietly for half-a- 
dozen volunteers to act as scouts. 

I think the colonel came to our com- 
pany because he knew Joe was there, 
and he instantly responded. But I 
have often wondered at the strange im- 
pulse which seemed to compel me and 
the others to step forth by his side. 
After the men once knew him, Joe 
never went begging for followers ; there 
was an irresistible infection in his exam- 
ple, and an allurement in his cheerful 
fearlessness that not only made men 
forget peril, but made it seem a privi- 
lege to go with him. It was so after- 
ward in affairs compared to which our 
adventure of that night was but a 
pleasure trip. 

The colonel himself led us out to 
the further edge of the grove, posted 
us in couples behind trees, and gave us 
our instructions which were, " Watch 



One Young Soldier 189 

carefully for any signs of the enemy. 
Their picket line is out there some- 
where in front of you ; if you see any 
movement do not fire, but come in 
quietly and report, and in any case 
come in quietly at daybreak." 

He left us ; we heard his retreating 
footsteps until he reached the line, and 
then we began to realise the situation. 
We were between two possible and quite 
probable fires. It was bright moon- 
light; our regiment as we afterwards 
discovered, was perilously advanced and 
isolated ; if by any chance the enemy 
knew our position there would be every 
temptation to attack, and, if that hap- 
pened, even if they should advance 
their skirmishers, we scouts would cer- 
tainly catch it from both sides, and the 
worst danger was from our own men. 
Very few of them would know we were 
outside the line, and it was wholly un- 
likely that we could "come in quietly 



190 One Young Soldier 

and report '* without having a hundred 
rifles levelled at us. When we did 
come in at daybreak one of us nar- 
rowly escaped death at the hands of a 
comrade in his own company, who, in 
the gray light, mistook him for a 
" Reb " and tried to shoot him. The 
colonel knew we were likely to be 
sacrificed, and therefore his call for 
volunteers. 

But Joe was in his element. " This 
is bully ! '* he exclaimed, as he surveyed 
the scene when we were left alone. 
" No officers will bother us here to- 
night ; they think too much of keeping 
their precious skins whole to stir out- 
side the line." 

The prospect was certainly fascinat- 
ing. Behind us the giant oaks through 
whose shadows the moonbeams sifted 
their uncertain rays ; before us a sweet 
expanse of pale-green meadow, weird 
with the mingled effect of tenuous curl- 



One Young Soldier 191 

ing mists and moonlight, shot across 
here and there with mysterious hedge- 
rows and indistinct tree clumps, the pos- 
sible and as we found in the morning, 
the actual cover of the foeman's skirm- 
ishers — a strange combination of peace- 
ful beauty and lurking death. 

The sounds too, which came to us 
through the still and misty air were full 
of ominous significance. Through the 
dark of the grove, the anxious but sub- 
dued voices of our officers patrolling 
the line, keeping the wearied pickets 
awake and watchful ; beyond through 
the moonlight across the meadow the 
distant rumble from the railroad, the 
noise of unloading cars and loading 
wagons and the shouts of teamsters at 
the station within the enemy's lines 
perhaps a mile away, warning us that 
by morning he would be heavily rein- 
forced. 

We watched as the night wore away, 



192 One Young Soldier 

half-expecting, half-dreading what each 
moment might spring upon us, but all 
was as still as death in that pale field, 
until some time after midnight a strange 
white Shape came moving through the 
mists. We watched it anxiously, per- 
haps at that chill hour a little apprehen- 
sively, but as it drew near our fears 
were banished. It was a poor old 
worn-out war-horse turned loose to 
die. We watched him grazing quietly 
in the meadow, and then Joe's instinct 
for adventure awoke. 

" I say, let 's go and capture that old 
beast. What a lark it would be to 
drive him before us into the line in the 
morning and make the boys think we 
had taken a prisoner ! " 

"No, sir," I replied; "we don't know 
where the enemy's skirmishers are, but 
I for one am just as near them as I 
want to be ! " 

It was well for Joe that he had a 



One Young Soldier 193 

more cautious comrade with him, for 
he yielded at last to the counsels of 
manifest prudence ; but all night long 
he looked at that old white horse with 
longing eyes. 

We had not more than safely reached 
our company in the morning before the 
foe discovered himself, and the vener- 
able oaks grew vocal with singing bul- 
lets ; but I shall always cherish the 
memory of that risky but harmless 
adventure in Joe's dear company, for 
he and I were soon to part. 

I have often wondered if the shadow 
of his fate did not even then come over 
him at times ! Recklessly cheerful as 
he always was in the face of danger or 
difficulty, there were moments when, to 
me at least, he showed another mood. 
In those gloomy days after the tragedy 
of the first Fredericksburg, when the 
issue of the great conflict seemed doubt- 
ful, he said to me one day : — 
13 



194 ^^^ Young Soldier 

"You and I are young men; life is 
all before us, but what will our lives be 
worth in this country if the South suc- 
ceeds ? For my part I do not mean to 
live to see it." 

We had in our company a lot of very 
young fellows, some of them less than 
eighteen years old, whose ardent patriot- 
ism and willing courage and endurance 
shamed many of their elders. We were 
talking one day about the readiness of 
these bright boys to face death and 
danger, when Joe said very solemnly : 

" Yes ! the more a man*s life is 
worth, the less he cares for it." 

A year had passed since our sum- 
mer night's adventure under the oaks, 
and Joe had been made a commissioned 
officer in another regiment. Men of 
ours, whose time had expired, flocked 
to him to re-enlist under his command, 
and his company was largely composed 
of old comrades. His next real service 



One Young Soldier 195 

was in that memorable and bloody siege 
of Petersburg. I met him once during 
the winter; he had been at-home on 
furlough and I have always suspected 
that he came away with a heart wound, — 
the only wound he ever received until 
he met his death. We were boys when 
first we were thrown together, and bash- 
ful about such things, and intimate as 
I afterwards became with him he was 
always reticent about his love-affairs ; 
but I had a feeling that one fair girl at 
home could have told why Joe returned 
to his perilous duty robbed of that light- 
heartedness which used to diffuse itself 
about him like an atmosphere. Was it 
that, or was it the gloom of the appar- 
ently endless conflict which had entered 
his soul ? I could never be quite sure. 
He told me in curt phrase all about 
the position of his regiment close by 
that famous redoubt to which the sol- 
diers had given the significant name of 



196 One Young Soldier 

" Fort Hell," and then he said, " Some 
day, I think soon. Grant is going to 
break through those lines, and when he 
does, I am going to distinguish myself 
or get killed ! " 

Shortly after his return to the post 
of duty I had a letter from him which 
showed an exaggerated gleam of his 
old humour. It told of the loss of a 
number of his men in the incessant 
picket firing and of his own narrow 
escapes, and then contrasting my pros- 
pects with his own, he said, " As for 
me I am wedded to the Goddess of 
Liberty, and, by Jove ! the old girl 
met me half way and gave me my 
shoulder-straps for marrying her. I 
like my spouse ; though it is well I 
am not of a jealous disposition, for the 
Old Lady has now near a million hus- 
bands and is on the lookout for 
more!" 

Then we heard of another of his 



One Young Soldier 197 

characteristic escapades. It was evident 
that some change had taken place in 
the disposition of the enemy^s troops. 
The officer in charge of the picket line 
was anxious to know what this meant, 
and Joe at once offered to investigate. 
Taking two men with him he pretended 
to desert to the enemy. The oppos- 
ing lines were close together, and be- 
tween them all was bare and open, so 
that no secrecy could be practised. 
Joe and his two companions sprang 
across the trenches and ran toward the 
Confederates, shouting as they neared 
them, — 

" Say, Johnnies, will you take de- 
serters? " The fire ceased and the 
answer came, " Yes, Billy, come on ! 
come right in ! " 

Then Joe left his two men and went 
up closer for further parley. 

" Johnnies, we want to come in, but 
we 're rather afraid of you Twenty- 



198 One Young Soldier 

second South Carolina fellows ! '* and 
the reply was, — 

" Oh, you need n*t be afraid, we 're 
not the Twenty-second South Carolina, 
they were sent away from here yester- 
day. We *re the Eighteenth Georgia ! " 

This was precisely the information 
he wanted, and with a little more artful 
parley he edged backwards, watching 
his chance, and then sending his men 
before him to their own lines, he ran 
back himself, reaching shelter barely in 
time, escaping unhurt through the storm 
of bullets which his baffled and enraged 
foes sent after him. 

The great day came at last, the day 
of that awful assault on the Petersburg 
entrenchments. Joe had been on picket 
all night and, according to army rules 
would have been exempt from duty for 
the next twenty-four hours. But as 
he came in from his weary and perilous 
night watch, in the gray dawn he saw 



One Young Soldier 199 

the preparation for the struggle and 
heard a call for volunteers. A " forlorn 
hope," an officer and thirty men, were 
wanted to lead the storming column 
and drive in the enemy*s entrenched 
pickets. Joe at once offered himself; 
men were always ready to follow whither 
he led, and more than thirty came for- 
ward at once. 

Out from the massed lines in the dim 
light of dusky dawn the devoted little 
band moved. Those who were with 
him said that, as they came to the 
picket posts, — rifle-pits with five or 
six men in each, — Joe would rush far 
ahead of his men straight up to the 
rifle-pit with drawn sword and imperious 
command. 

" Throw down your arms and sur- 
render ! *' 

And thus by sheer boldness he 
actually captured a half-dozen groups 
of pickets in succession, until at last his 



200 One Young Soldier 

summons was answered by a volley, and 
one bullet struck him in the breast. 
The wound, his first (unless it was that 
heart wound), was his last and mortal. 

As we, his old comrades, far from 
the bloody field heard the news, we could 
scarcely believe it. Death in battle was 
common enough God knows, in those 
dreadful days ; but somehow Joe had 
always seemed to bear a charmed life. 
It was hard to think of him among the 
slain. Yet there were many " I told 
you so's,'* and not a few with wise wag 
of prudent head declared, "It was bound 
to come to Joe, he was always rash ; 
this time foolhardy." 

But such talk was little heeded by 
those of us who knew Joe. We knew 
too well that even in most desperate 
moments he would think with melting 
heart of the brave men under his com- 
mand, and take any risk to spare them. 
We also knew how thoroughly he be- 



One Young Soldier 201 

lieved that audacity was the right hand 
of success. Such men are the nerve of 
an army. There never are very many 
of them ; very few survive a great war, 
for victories are won by their blood. 
They are literally offerings upon the 
altar of their country. Under Joe's 
rude jest about the Goddess of Liberty 
I knew there was the feeling that his life 
was devoted to the land he loved with 
passionate ardour. 

When the news of Petersburg came, 
our old lieutenant-colonel, a grizzled 
veteran who had been through most of 
the great battles of the war came to me 
and eagerly asked, — " Had I heard 
from Joe ? " I told him. The tears 
came into his eyes as he turned away 
exclaiming, — 

" My God ! Such men sacrificed ! " 



Sacrifice 

BROWNING in a well-known 
poem describes the Emperor 
Napoleon at Ratisbon. He is standing 
on a little mound watching the storm- 
ing of the city by his army and waiting 
anxiously for the result. Suddenly 

" Out *twixt the battery smoke there flew 
A rider bound on bound 
Full galloping — " 

The rider is an aide, a mere boy ; he is 
desperately wounded, " his breast all 
but shot in two/* yet he conceals his 
hurt, he reaches the Emperor, flings 
himself from his horse and in proud 
tones announces the victory of the 
legions and proclaims the glory of 
Napoleon. 



Sacrifice 203 

'* The Chief's eye flashed : but presently 
Softened itself as sheathes 
A film the mother eagle's eye 
When her bruised eaglet breathes. 
'You 're wounded ! ' * Nay,' the soldier's pride 
Touched to the quick, he said 
'I'm killed. Sire ! ' and his Chief beside. 
Smiling the boy fell dead." 

In his account of the battle of Gettys- 
burg General Doubleday relates an in- 
cident which, as he says, is like this one 
of Ratisbon. " After the fierce fight in 
the railroad cut on the first day of the 
battle, an officer of the Sixth Wis- 
consin approached Lieutenant-Colonel 
Dawes, the commander of the regiment. 
The colonel supposed from the firm 
and erect attitude of the man that he 
came to report for orders of some kind : 
but the compressed lips told a different 
story. With a great effort the officer 
said : ' Tell them at home that I died 
like a man and a soldier ! ' He threw 



204 Sacrifice 

open his breast, displayed a ghastly 
wound and dropped dead at the colo- 
ners feet." 

The two incidents are indeed similar 
but with a profound difference of tone. 
The note struck by Napoleon's aide is 
the brilliant one of glory ; that which 
vibrates in the Wisconsin officer's dying 
words is the proudly pathetic chord of 
home. 

It was characteristic of our army, — 
nay, of our war and of both the con- 
tending armies, — Union and Confeder- 
ate. Neither of us fought for conquest 
or for glory, but a heritage of clashing 
principles woven by no will of ours into 
the very beginnings of our nation's his- 
tory, involving its very life, had come 
at last in our day to the inevitable and 
awful arbitrament of battle. 

We who fought in that war were 
not professional soldiers : our gathered 
hosts, our regiments and companies 



Sacrifice 205 

were composed of friends and neigh- 
bours, segments of the clustering homes 
from which and for the sake of which 
we had gone forth, and we knew always 
that though far away we were not un- 
watched. In those creepy moments on 
the verge of battle when amid whizz 
of waspish bullets and angry echo of 
skirmish rifles the grim shadow of 
bloody strife rolled toward us, many a 
boy would hear in his soul the voice of 
his father*s parting exhortation to play 
the man ; many a young fellow would 
say to himself, as the image of the dear 
girl who shyly and tearfully bade him 
good-bye rose before him, " She shall 
never have reason to be ashamed of 
me ; " and the husband, while his 
thoughts fly far away to the home 
where wife and children wait for him, 
would pray, " God protect them if I 
fall, but let me not disgrace them ! " 
The constant question in our hearts 



2o6 Sacrifice 

was, " What will the folks at home say 
about us ? '* 

I have known sick men, really unfit 
for duty, who, when rumours of " a 
move " came, would keep out of the 
surgeon's way, and when their regiment 
was called into action would shoulder 
their rifles and drag themselves along 
with their comrades for fear some re- 
port that they had shirked might travel 
home. We fought with the feeling 
that we were under the straining eyes 
of those who loved us and had sent us 
forth, whose approval we valued more 
than life. 

There was little talk about these 
things. We thought them in our 
hearts. We knew our comrades were 
thinking them, but only some very 
special or confidential occasion brought 
such thoughts to our lips. When " dy- 
ing for home and country " is an event 
quite likely to happen in the way of 



Sacrijfice 207 

your ordinary duty of next week or to- 
morrow. It becomes at once a matter 
too trite to be interesting as a subject 
of conversation, and too solemn for 
common talk, with men of Anglo-Saxon 
breed. Now this deep, widespread, 
though seldom-spoken sentiment ex- 
plains, as nothing else can, the enormous 
sacrifices which were constantly and 
willingly made in our war, — especially 
when along with it due account is taken 
of the character of our armies. By far 
the largest number of enlistments were 
made at the age of eighteen (which 
often meant seventeen or even sixteen), 
and the average age of our men was 
twenty-five years. The Nation gave 
its best ; the dew of its youth, the dis- 
tilled essence of American manhood 
flowed into the armies of both North 
and South. And when we who went 
forth with those hosts read the statistics 
which show that the death-harvest of 



2o8 Sacrifice 

battle alone — to say nothing of the far 
Jarger reaping of disease and exhaus- 
tion — reached the awful figures of two 
hundrei thousand, an indescribably 
solemn feeling comes over us : for we 
know well that it was not the easily 
spared who gave their lives ; we know 
that the dreadful vintage of our battle- 
fields was rich with the blood of the 
young, the bright, the brave, the 
promising. 

Military critics may show, to their 
own satisfaction at least, how battles 
might have been fought less expen- 
sively, but the significant fact remains 
that, with the exception of Bull Run, 
which after all was but a small affair 
between two newly gathered and as 
yet unorganised armies, there was 
never a complete rout; there was not 
one decisive victory on either side ; 
there was no Waterloo, the war ended 
simply by the exhaustion of the South, 



Sacrifice 209 

and the long succession of battles was 
fought by men who did not, who would 
not know when they were beaten. Lee 
and Longstreet and Hill; Grant, Sher- 
man, Sheridan and Meade are names 
that will never look contemptible among 
the world's military leaders, yet the 
men who followed even more than the 
generals who led, made our war what 
it was. 

A few instances taken from the story 
of regiments which I happened to know 
may help to make this clear. These 
incidents are typical of the fighting and 
the sacrifice which was common to both 
armies. None of them are really ex- 
ceptional unless it be that of the First 
Minnesota, and even that might be 
paralleled in sacrifice several times in 
both Union and Confederate armies. 

The story of the First Minnesota at 
Gettysburg seems almost an anachronism 
in this nineteenth century. It carries 
14 



2IO Sacrifice 

one back to the heroic ages with a sug- 
gestion of the Iliad or of the Spartans 
at Thermopylae. Its truly modern 
phase is the matter-of-fact manner in 
which our military historians pass it by 
with barest mention as a mere tactical 
incident of a wholesale battle-field, and 
the consequent ignorance of the Ameri- 
can public concerning one of the most 
romantic incidents of our history. 

Minnesota was too young in those 
days to have many native sons, and her 
generous quota of volunteers was filled 
with scions of that truest American 
Aristocracy, the Commonwealth Foun- 
ders whose motto is " Westward Ho ! " 
Out of Eastern homes, scattered all the 
way from Maine to Michigan, these 
bold spirits had come to the North Star 
State to carve careers for themselves, 
and their country*s call to arms met 
with quick and whole-souled response. 
The First Minnesota regiment was 



Sacrifice 211 

fortunate in its commanders. Three 
colonels had risen from it to the com- 
mand of brigades, two of them regular 
army officers under whose rigid school- 
ing the regiment gained a high reputa- 
tion for discipline and efficiency. But 
Colville who commanded at Gettysburg, 
was a typical Westerner, tall, ungainly, 
with strong and homely face of the 
Lincoln stamp. It is said that when 
his turn for promotion came he at first 
refused, thinking himself unfit; but the 
moment of supreme trial showed his 
mistaken modesty. 

Perhaps you have seen a thunder- 
cloud lie black and threatening in the 
west on a sultry summer day. Slowly 
it masses its lurid bulk, while you ask 
yourself anxiously where and when it 
will strike. So Meade and his generals, 
unprepared as yet with their scattered 
corps slowly arriving, watched Lee's 
army on the second of July, the really 



2 1 2 Sacrifice 

decisive day of Gettysburg ; for Pickett's 
grand charge on the morrow was but 
a last desperate attempt to retrieve an 
already lost cause. 

About four o'clock in the afternoon 
the marshalled storm marched forth 
roaring in the fury of Longstreet's tre- 
mendous assault upon the exposed line 
of our Third Corps, and from then 
until dark, along the Emmettsburgh 
Road, in the Peach Orchard, about 
Throstle's farm-house, amid the Rocks 
of the Devil's Den, up and over Round 
Top, to and fro through the bloody 
Wheat Field such a combat raged as 
the world had not seen since Waterloo. 

Away at the rear, a mile behind the 
battle's outmost edge, on the slope of 
that ridge against which the storm spent 
itself at last. Battery C, Fourth United 
States Artillery, goes into position, and 
the First Minnesota, weakened now by 
the detachment of two companies for 



Sacrifice 213 

other duty, is ordered to its support. 
The eight companies number two hun- 
dred and sixty-two men : a slender bat- 
talion, for their dead and wounded have 
been left behind on a score of hard- 
fought fields. 

Unlike many of our battles Gettys- 
burg was fought in the open country, 
and from the vantage ground upon 
which the little regiment stood the 
scene of strife was spread before them 
in full view. With eager eyes and 
anxious hearts they watch the fury of 
the oncoming tempest. For half an 
hour it sways hither and thither ; the 
pressure upon our too extended lines is 
becoming fearfiil. Can the Third Corps 
men endure It ? No ; slowly, grimly, 
stubbornly fighting they are borne back- 
ward. There Is a bad break yonder at 
the Peach Orchard, a very wrestle of 
demons about BIgelow's guns at 
Throstle's; in the Wheat Field the 



214 Sacrifice 

ripening grain is sodden with the wine 
of that dark harvest which the Pale 
Reaper is gathering; he is triumphant 
now. The moments have counted out 
almost an hour of deepening disaster. 
The advanced guard of the storm, the 
wrack sent hustling before the gale, is 
sweeping up the slope. Around the 
flaming battery, past the silent solid line 
of the First Minnesota pours the pallid 
throng of wounded and of fugitives, the 
fragments of torn regiments, and behind 
it all, with awful impact, the storm ad- 
vances, rolling inward like an oncoming 
tide. Its advancing waves are breaking 
at the very foot of the slope, when a new 
spirit appears upon the scene. Hancock 
has come. Without waiting for the rein- 
forcements following at his order, he 
rides alone into the very vortex of the 
hellish din. His masterful presence is 
like magic. Order begins to shape 
itself out of the confusion, a new line 



Sacrifice 215 

of resistance is quickly patched from 
rallied regiments rendered hopeful by- 
word that help is coming. But before 
the new line is complete, while as yet 
a yawning gap is unfilled, from behind 
a clump of trees the Confederate brig- 
ades of Wilcox and Barksdale suddenly 
emerge. They see their opportunity 
and, flushed with victory, with wild yells 
they charge directly at the gap in the 
new line. Consternation seizes every 
one. The gunners of the battery begin 
to desert their pieces ; the First Minne- 
sota is left alone. But that regiment has 
never been known to disobey an order, 
and its men stand firm. It is one of 
those moments big with fate whose issue 
can be met only by lightning-like de- 
cision and supreme sacrifice. Hancock's 
glance lights upon the little lonely 
unbroken regiment. Instantly he is 
beside Colville. Pointing to the ad- 
vancing massesj he says, — 



2 1 6 Sacrifice 

"Do you see those lines? Charge 
them ! '* 

Colvilie's answer is the command, 
" Attention, battalion ! Forward, double 
quick!" 

Every man knew what it meant. It 
was a call to death, but not one hesi- 
tated. Down the gentle slope they go 
in perfect order, two hundred and sixty 
against three thousand. The Confeder- 
ate line, blazing with fire is now only a 
short hundred yards away. The ranks 
of the little regiment are rapidly thinned, 
but they go forward faster and faster. 
One of them said, — 

" We were only afraid there would n't 
be enough of us left by the time we 
reached them to make any impression 
on the enemy." 

At the bottom of the slope is a little 
brook, its bed dry with summer heat, its 
banks lined with bushes. The enemy 
reach it first, and the rough crossing 



Sacrifice 2 1 7 

somewhat disorders their front line. 
Colville seizes his desperate chance: 
" Charge ! " He roars the command, 
and down come the bayonets in level 
gleaming row, and at full run the men 
of the North dash straight at the faces 
of the astonished foe. One who saw it 
all says, — 

" The men are not made who will 
stand before bayonets coming at them 
with such speed and such evident 
desperation.'* 

The front line of the enemy recoils, 
breaks, its men flee backward and throw 
the second line into confusion. The 
brook's bed is empty now. Again 
Colville clutches the moment: "Halt! 
Fire ! " 

It is frightfully short range, the volley 
is feeble only in volume, for every shot 
tells and there is a hideous gap in the 
disordered brown ranks. 

Then the heroes fling themselves into 



2 1 8 Sacrifice 

the bed of the brook. It is a good 
extempore rifle-pit. They have but 
one care now, they will obey, not only 
the letter but the spirit of their orders, 
they will hold back that threatening 
mass while they can, and sell their lives 
dearly. They fire carefully, calmly, 
every shot meant to hit and hurt ; and 
for a few moments longer fear of that 
desperate little wasp's nest in the brook 
holds thousands in check. But only 
for a few moments. The wasp's nest 
must be exterminated, and from the 
front of them, from the right of them, 
from the left of them, a concentrated 
and increasingly fatal fire rains. Fainter 
and fainter come the answering ring of 
rifle-shots from the little brook. The 
bed is no longer dry, it runs with 
blood. 

But at last Hancock's reinforce- 
ments arrive. He has not forgotten his 
Forlorn Hope. Not a regiment but 



Sacrifice 219 

a brigade, two of them, three of them 
he hurries to the rescue, and " the 
First Minnesota is relieved.'* 

Fifteen minutes ago they were two 
hundred and sixty-two. Now there 
are forty-seven able to stand up and 
be counted ! But not one is " miss- 
ing." No prisoners have been taken 
from their ranks, none have shirked 
or deserted. Only one man of the 
colour-guard remains, but he carries out 
their gloriously torn flag in triumph. 
Colville is desperately wounded, all the 
field oflicers have fallen, only one cap- 
tain is left. Two hundred and fifteen, 
out of two hundred and sixty-two, lie 
along the slope or in the bloody little 
brook. This is the high-water mark 
of heroic sacrifice. General Hancock 
said of it : — 

" There is no more gallant deed in 
history. I was glad to find such a 
body of men at hand willing to make 



220 Sacrifice 

the terrible sacrifice that the occasion 
demanded. I ordered those men in 
because I saw that I must gain five 
minutes' time. Reinfi)rcements were 
coming on the run, but I knew that 
befijre they could reach the threatened 
point, the Confederates, unless checked, 
would seize the position. I would have 
ordered that regiment in if I had known 
that every man would be killed. It had 
to be done." 

One might have thought the First 
Minnesota extinguished. Far from it. 
At nightfall the two outlying compa- 
nies came in, and with the forty-seven 
survivors a miniature battalion was 
formed in command of the brave sur- 
viving captain. On the eventful mor- 
row, the day of final victory, the First 
Minnesota was again in the thick of 
the storm where the topmost waves 
of Pickett's charge spent their fury. 
And as though conscious that com- 



Sacrifice 221 

mon work was no longer fit for them, 
they bore themselves with exaltation. 
A shot cut away the staff* of their 
precious colours and killed the last 
man of the colour-guard. Instantly 
the standard was seized by another 
hand and borne far forward into the 
thick of the fight ; a flag was wrested 
from the enemy, and after the battle 
their shattered staff was spliced with 
the captured one. But their captain 
and sixteen good men were added to 
the roll of sacrifice. 

One reason why such an exploit as 
that of the First Minnesota is not 
better known, is that sacrifices only a 
little less extreme were all too com- 
mon in our war, and upon both sides. 
Colonel Fox, in his carefully compiled 
book on " Regimental Losses," gives 
a list of sixty-four Union regiments, 
and a similar and equally gruesome 
one of Confederates, who suffered 



222 Sacrifice 

losses in single battles ranging from 
eighty to fifty per cent of their num- 
ber, and he remarks that these fright- 
ful sacrifices are not those of massacres 
or blunders, but such as were met 
with in hard stand-up, give-and-take 
fighting. 

Now a loss of thirty per cent is 
considered severe, and forty per cent 
extreme, in modern warfare. 

The gallant British Light Brigade 
which Tennyson*s noble poem has 
made immortal went into their famous 
charge at Balaklava six hundred and 
seventy-three strong. Their loss was 
two hundred and forty-seven, or not 
quite thirty-seven per cent. None the 
less do they deserve the crown which 
genius has given them. They were as 
truly martyrs to duty as though every 
one had fallen. 

The severest regimental loss in the 
war between France and Germany fell 



Sacrifice 223 

upon the Sixteenth German Infantry 
at Mars-le-Tour. Forty-nine per cent 
of their number were killed, wounded, 
or missing. But the German regiments 
are three thousand strong, comparable 
only to our brigades. And this sacri- 
fice of the brave Germans brings to 
mind the strikingly similar one of my 
old comrades of the Vermont Brigade 
at the battle of the Wilderness. 

Brigades in our army were commonly 
composed of half-a-dozen regiments 
more or less, often from widely sepa- 
rated States ; but there were exceptions. 
The Sixth Army Corps would scarcely 
have known itself without the Jersey 
Brigade in its first division, and the 
Vermont Brigade in its second. Both 
became famous, and their integrity as 
exclusively State organisations was 
broken only once, when for nearly a 
year the regiment in which I served 
was brigaded with the Vermonters. It 



224 Sacrifice 

was not a kind or judicious act on the 
part of the military authorities to assign 
us thus, but I shall always think it a 
piece of good fortune that I once 
marched and fought with those Green 
Mountain men, and friendships made 
among them are cherished still. 

The brigade was like a great family 
whose consciousness of proud and 
romantic traditions and whose singular 
cohesiveness reminded one of the Scot- 
tish Clans. But its material was most 
thoroughly American. The men had 
the qualities of mountaineers, their 
reserve, independence, and resourceful- 
ness, and among the officers were men 
of high character and culture, some 
of whom, like Senator Proctor, have 
since become distinguished in civil life. 

Stalwart fellows those Vermonters 
were ; above the average in both intelli- 
gence and stature, tireless on the march, 
cool, bitter, and persistent fighters. 



Sacrifice 225 

At well named Savage's Station, one 
of their regiments had been badly cut 
up in an affair which did highest credit 
to its grit and discipline, but at the 
time when we were with them the 
brigade as a whole had become noted 
rather for losses inflicted on the enemy 
than for those suflTered. None who 
saw and shared in it, can ever forget 
their wonderful fight at Bank's Ford, 
where at surprisingly small cost to 
themselves they repulsed and fearfully 
punished Early's Confederate division 
and saved the Sixth Corps from black 
disaster. 

But such reputations were perilous 
in our army. The demand for sac- 
rifice was sure to reach men like these. 
A year and a day from the time when 
they threw oflF Early's flank attack at 
Bank's Ford, the Vermonters found 
themselves in the midst of the bloody 
storm-centre of the most weird, con- 



226 Sacrifice 

fused, and difficult of the battles of the 
Army of the Potomac. 

" The Wilderness " is a region the 
like of which can be found only along 
the Southern Atlantic seaboard. For 
miles, abrupt ridges of clay or gravel 
cut with ragged ravines are covered 
with dense growth of woods and 
brush; now scraggy oak, now hedge- 
like thickets of dwarf pine, — a gloomy, 
intricate, intractable region. 

But its very difficulties were Lee's 
advantage. His men knew the Wil- 
derness ; many of them had grown up 
within it or on its borders. His plan 
of battle was simple, daring, and full 
of peril to his foes. 

The road southward from the Fords 
of the Rapidan by which Grant's army 
was compelled to move leads through 
this region. In the midst of the forest 
the north and south road is crossed by 
two others running nearly east and 



Sacrifice 227 

west. Down these intersecting roads 
Lee poured his columns, striving to 
strike the dangerously extended Union 
line in flank, break it into fragments, 
and while entangled in the Wilderness 
play havoc with it. 

At the most important of these road- 
junctions, at the vital point of the 
Union line, the position which must be 
held at any cost, on the afternoon of 
the fifth of May Getty's Division of 
the Sixth Corps was posted with the 
Vermont Brigade in front. They 
await the arrival of Hancock with the 
Second Corps, hoping then to push the 
enemy, now retarded in their advance 
by skirmishers and by the difficult 
nature of the ground, away from the 
danger-point, back into more open 
country where more even battle can 
be had. General Grant grows impa- 
tient ; he orders Getty to attack at 
once without waiting for Hancock. 



228 Sacrifice 

The narrow road is the only place 
where artillery can be used. It is 
occupied by a battery ; the infantry 
brigades must feel and fight their way 
through the thicket on either side. 
Suddenly the opposing lines meet. 
Volleys leap like sheaves of lightning 
from the brush, men fall [by scores, 
there are charges and counter-charges; 
but in that Wilderness maze where 
foes phantom-like appear and disap- 
pear the bayonet is useless. The 
battle settles down to a grim trial of 
endurance. To stand up is death ; 
the opposing lines, only a few yards 
distant from each other, lie down and 
fight close to the ground. Neither can 
advance, because neither will give way. 
The men of the South, on their native 
heath, taking advantage of every foot of 
familiar ground, creeping up here or there 
where smallest advantage appears, are 
bent on hewing a path to the Brock Road. 



Sacrifice 229 

The Vermonters, upon whom now the 
weight of the battle is falling, will not 
yield an inch. Then was seen the close 
clanship of those men of the Green 
Mountains. Like brothers their five 
regiments stick together, each ready to 
help each without confusion, with quick 
comprehension of every emergency, 
cool, desperate, deadly in the blows they 
give a common enemy. But their 
ranks are melting mournfully in the 
savage heat of the weird combat ; from 
the Vermont officers especially the 
Southern rifles are taking ghastly toll ; 
for while the men fight lying down, the 
officers must be on their feet moving 
from place to place along the line. 
One who was there with them says, 
"One after another of the officers fell 
not to rise again, or was borne bleeding 
to the rear. The men^s faces grew 
powder-grimed and their mouths black 
from biting cartridges ; the musketry 



230 Sacrifice 

silenced all sounds, and the air of the 
woods was hot and heavy with sul- 
phurous vapour ; the tops of the bushes 
were cut away by the leaden storm that 
swept through them." 

For two dreadful hours this went on, 
until the arrival of the advanced divi- 
sion of the Second Corps brought relief. 
Fresh troops were sent in to hold the 
road, and the Vermonters were ordered 
to withdraw. This was easier said than 
done. Each side was holding the other 
as in a vice. Finally a daring but costly 
charge by one regiment, concentrating 
the enemy's fire upon it alone, made 
possible the retirement of the others in 
good order. The Vermont Brigade 
had held the road until reinforcements 
made it secure for that day at least, 
but at frightful cost. "Of five colo- 
nels of the brigade only one was 
left unhurt. Fifty of the best line 
officers were killed or wounded ; a 



Sacrifice 231 

thousand Vermont soldiers fell that 
afternoon." 

Darkness closed the battle for that 
day, but night brought little rest. The 
wounded had to be sought — too often 
vainly sought in the dark amid the 
thickets ; from suspicious skirmish lines 
frequent gleam and rattle of nervous, 
fitfiil volleys flashed, startling the dark- 
ness, and at the dawn of day the battle 
opened with renewed fury. Again the 
bereft and decimated brigade was called 
to perilous and responsible duty, which 
they nobly fulfilled ; and when the 
second evening came, they could count 
their total loss. Out of less than 
twenty-eight hundred who had gone 
into battle over twelve hundred had 
fallen, among whom were three-fourths 
of the officers on duty. The greater 
part of this loss fell within the two 
hours of the first day's fight in the 
woods. 



232 Sacrifice 

It was then that the colonel of the 
Second Regiment was wounded, went 
to the rear, had his hurt dressed, 
returned to his post, and as he went along 
the line speaking words of cheer to his 
men was struck by a second bullet and 
instantly killed. His place was taken 
by the lieutenant-colonel, "a boy in 
years but of approved valour," who also 
was presently stricken down with a 
death wound, leaving the regiment with- 
out a field officer. It is worth noting 
that these two young officers both rose 
from lieutenancies to the command of 
their regiment, and both came out of 
those choice homes in which more than 
almost anywhere else on earth culture 
and conscience meet. They were sons 
of New England ministers. The faces 
of some of those fallen Vermonters rise 
before me to-day. There was the 
colonel of the Sixth, in whose regiment, 
along with a few comrades, I found my- 



Sacrifice 233 

self at the time of the final onset of the 
Confederates at Bank^s Ford. A thrill 
of admiration always goes through me 
whenever I think of the superbly calm 
courage with which he held us down in 
the sunken road in face of that charging 
whirlwind which, had it reached us, 
would have swept us away like chaff. 
I can hear his voice even now, as when 
the foe was almost upon us it rang out 
above the noise of battle in clear com- 
mand, " Rise ! Fire ! " 

Alas, he was one of the Wilderness 
victims : a Christian gentleman, rever- 
enced and beloved by his men and fel- 
low-officers. And the captain of that 
company whose line we lengthened, he 
too met a pathetically heroic death. 
Early in the afternoon's fight in the 
woods he received a severe wound in 
the head : a wound which, as one of his 
comrades told me, was more than enough 
to have sent most men out of the battle. 



234 Sacrifice 

His men all loved him, and they begged 
him to go to the rear and have his hurt 
cared for. But with the blood stream- 
ing down his face, and the anger of bat- 
tle in his strong soul, he sternly refused, 
saying, " It is the business of no live 
man to go to the rear at a time like 
this ! ** A few moments later, and again 
he was struck by a bullet in the thigh. 
He retired a short distance, took off his 
sash, bound up his second wound, 
returned to his place in the line, and 
while cheering his men a third bullet 
found this hero*s heart and silenced his 
voice forever. The sacrifice of the Ver- 
mont Brigade was not one of numbers 
only. 

Ghastly incidents abounded in that 
Wilderness battle-field. One of them, 
told me in a letter from a Fifth Corps 
comrade, is unique in its horror. He 
was severely wounded, and, finding him- 
self useless on the line of battle, tried to 



Sacrifice 235 

make his way to the rear. After several 
narrow escapes from capture, he came 
to a little open field. Here a number 
of others, like himself wounded, were 
gathered, and faint from loss of blood 
and from hunger they sat down together 
and tried to eat a little from shared 
rations of such as had any. 

The little field, scarce a hundred yards 
across, had been the scene of conflict 
earlier in the day, and hundreds of dead 
and mortally wounded lay scattered 
about It. 

Close by where they sat down lay a 
young soldier from a Connecticut regi- 
ment, frightfully shot in the breast so 
that his lungs protruded. His life 
was slowly, painfully ebbing away. 

My friend and his comrades, forget- 
ting their own hurts at the sight, tried 
to do what they could for him. They 
raised him up, put a blanket under him, 
and propped him against a tree so that 



236 Sacrifice 

he could breathe a little easier. By 
feeble motions he made them understand 
that he wanted something fi-om his 
pocket. They searched and found a 
photograph of some loved one at home, 
which he eagerly grasped with both 
hands and held before his dying eyes 
while big tears rolled down his cheeks. 
But he seemed satisfied, he wanted 
nothing more, and my friend and his 
companions moved away to a little dis- 
tance where they could eat their lunch 
undisturbed by the gruesome sight of 
the mangled dying man. 

Presently a Georgian strayed into the 
field. He was wounded in the toe and 
was making a terrible fuss about it, 
limping along and using his musket for 
a crutch, but he stopped now and then 
to search the bodies of the dead for 
plunder. There were such ghouls, a 
few of them, in both armies. He came 
to the young Connecticut soldier ; they 



Sacrifice 237 

could see him snatch the picture from 
the dying man's hands, they heard a 
smothered exclamation which sounded 
like, " Oh, don't ! " and then they saw 
the brute strike the dying man with the 
butt of his musket. 

My friend, who was an officer, sprang 
to his feet, wounded as he was, and 
emptied his revolver at the man, who at 
the first shot took refuge behind the 
tree. Then the officer called for a 
loaded musket, and a singular duel be- 
gan, the villain behind the tree and my 
friend in the open exchanging shots in- 
effectually, when the Georgian, reloading 
in nervous haste, sprang his ramrod. It 
flew out of his hand and fell just out of 
reach. Unwilling to expose himself he 
clawed for it with his musket barrel, but 
in vain. At this juncture another 
wounded Confederate wandered into 
the horrible little field. He had not 
seen the prelude, he saw only a com- 



238 Sacrifice 

rade in trouble, and going boldly to his 
help was about to hand him his ramrod ; 
but from a dozen mangled men still 
able to handle a rifle threatening voices 
warned him to desist and let the two 
have it out alone. A few more wild 
attempts to hook the rammer toward 
him, and then in desperation he sud- 
denly lunged his body toward it. My 
friend says, " He looked at me side- 
ways with a scared look, as he reached 
out, but I just laughed to myself and 
fired. He fell dead, and I fainted and 
knew no more till I found myself in the 
hospital." 

The road from the Wilderness leads 
straight to Spottsylvania. Mere locali- 
ties, lonely, obscure, faintly marked on 
the maps they were and are still. Yet 
once, for just eight days their slumber 
was broken by the reverberations of 
continuous gigantic battle ; and scarcely 
another week in modern history has 



Sacrifice 239 

borne such fruitage of sacrifice. Official 
reports, which seldom err by excess, tell 
us that our army lost 36,000 men dur- 
ing those eight days. What the South 
lost no one knows, for General Lee had 
issued a special order forbidding his 
officers to keep the count. But figures 
after all are an inane expression of such 
an immolation. These were men who 
fell, — young men, our best. After that 
week and after Cold Harbor, which 
quickly followed, the Army of the Poto- 
mac, the generous host of volunteers 
for home and country's sake, was never 
the same. 

One regiment always comes to mind 
when Spottsylvania is named. It is in- 
deed only one out of many distinguished 
for heroic losses ; but I knew it well. 
Its members were fellow-citizens from 
my own State ; the regiment entered ser- 
vice at the same time with our own. 
We marched together in the Sixth Army 



240 Sacrifice 

Corps ; our first battles were alike ; we 
both left our dead on the plains below 
Fredericksburg and at bloody Salem 
Heights. 

The Fifteenth New Jersey was a choice 
regiment recruited from the flower of 
the manhood of the northern counties, 
and peculiarly full of that high senti- 
ment which consecrated patriotism in 
1862. It was officered largely by pro- 
motions from the veteran Jersey Brigade 
to which it was assigned, and after it 
took the field was commanded by a very 
able regular army officer. A light loss 
at Fredericksburg, a most severe one at 
Salem Church, where the regiment 
though as yet unseasonea bore itself 
with a steadiness and gallantry that ex- 
cited general admiration, then a year of 
hard campaigning with but little serious 
fighting, and the Wilderness was 
reached. 

The Fifteenth entered the week of 



Sacrifice 24 1 

battles with four hundred and twenty- 
nine men and fourteen line officers, 
beside field and staff. Of those eight 
days in the Wilderness and at Spottsyl- 
vania only one passed in which they 
met with no loss. During the fierce 
fighting on the fifth and sixth of May, 
though holding a responsible and ex- 
posed position, they suffered surpris- 
ingly little. On the seventh, another 
small loss met them on the skirmish 
line. They marched out of the Wil- 
derness poorer by one sadly missed 
captain and perhaps twenty men. 

The eighth brought the Jersey Bri- 
gade as the advance guard of the Sixth 
Corps to Spottsylvania. At once, with 
no time to rest, they were plunged into 
the first of that remorselessly persistent 
series of terrific assaults which have 
made the name of "The Bloody An- 
gle " forever famous. This first was 

but a reconnaissance ordered by General 
16 



242 Sacrifice 

Warren to " develop that hill/* For 
the Fifteenth it meant a charge across 
a treacherous morass, through timber 
slashings protecting and hiding the 
enemy's works, up to and over the very- 
parapet, then back again; and it cost 
them over a hundred good men. The 
ninth brought duty on a perilous skir- 
mish line, with a loss which included 
their colour-serjeant, killed by the same 
sharpshooter who slew General Sedg- 
wick, the beloved commander of the 
Sixth Corps. The tenth, another battle 
again before the Bloody Angle, and 
another severe loss. The modest narra- 
tive of the regiment's historian says of 
May nth: — 

" There was musketry firing through 
the early morning, and several times the 
roll of discharges rose high, but we were 
left in quiet for several hours and made 
up our regimental reports. Then three 
brigades, including our own, were ordered 



Sacrifice 243 

to hold themselves in readiness for a 
charge, and were drawn up in order. 
During the night the enemy had made 
their fortification in our front most 
formidable. We looked up at the 
frowning works and flaunting battle- 
flags and felt that the attempt to cap- 
ture them would be a march to death." 
But the assault was postponed and " the 
day was one of comparative quiet," and, 
for a wonder, a day of no losses for the 
Fifteenth regiment. 

Seven days of ceaseless battle have 
now reduced the regiment by nearly one- 
third. Less than three hundred men 
remain in the ranks. It has been more- 
over a week of pitiless, unbroken strain, 
of wearing anxiety, of sleepless nights 
passed in worrying marches or in nerv- 
ously exhausting picket duty close to 
the lines of an alert enemy. Imagine 
if you can seven days and nights with 
scarce a moment's respite from the 



244 Sacrifice 

crack of cannon or the' threatening rattle 
of musketry, seven days when you are 
seldom out of sight of the swollen 
corpses of the dead or out of hearing of 
the wails of the wounded ; seven horrible 
days, only one of which has gone by with- 
out seeing from half-a-dozen to a hun- 
dred of your comrades shot down, and 
ask yourself how fit you would be to 
take part in a desperate assault, a verita- 
ble march to death on the morrow ? 

Yet with this preparation and this 
anticipation thousands of men lay down 
in the chilling rain that night to get 
what rest they could. An officer whom 
I know well — he came home in com- 
mand of the regiment — told me that 
on this night he and three others, two 
captains and two lieutenants, were hud- 
dled together under a shelter tent, try- 
ing to get a little rest and escape from 
the pitiless storm. One of the captains, 
seeing troops filing by, spoke up : 



Sacrifice 245 

" Well, there goes the Second Corps ; 
we are in for another fight to-morrow, 
and it will be a nasty one. But I feel 
as though I should come out all right. 
I don't believe the bullet is yet moulded 
that will kill me ! " 

The other captain replied sadly, " I 
don't feel that way. I do not believe 
I shall be alive to-morrow night." 

The two lieutenants said nothing; 
they only listened and thought. 

Before the next night both the cap- 
tains lay dead on the field, their bodies 
riddled with bullets, one of the lieuten- 
ants had a leg shot off and a shoulder 
shattered. The fourth of the group, 
who told m.e the story, escaped with a 
bullet-hole through his coat. 

The 1 2th of May was ushered in 
with a tremendous assault by the whole 
of the Second Army Corps, led by Han- 
cock. The assault was at first a sweep- 
ing success, but inside the captured work 



246 ^ Sacrifice 

another entrenchment was encountered 
behind which the Confederates massed 
their forces, and then the real combat of 
the day began. It is an old story ; we 
have all heard how the armies, locked 
in deadly embrace, fought hand to hand 
so that several times during the day the 
trenches had to be cleared of the dead 
to give foothold for the living, and how 
great oak-trees were actually severed 
by riddling bullets so that they fell as 
if cut down by a woodman's axe. 

The morning was not far gone before 
all our army was engaged either within 
the salient, or in attempts to relieve the 
pressure there by fresh assaults on 
other portions of the line. In one of 
these the Fifteenth regiment met its 
culminating sacrifice. At one side of 
the Bloody Angle was an earthwork as 
yet untried by assault. Let us take a 
peep at it. To do so we must first 
force our way through a belt of dense 



Sacrifice 247 

pine thicket full of dead branches that 
tear clothes and flesh. At the edge of 
the thicket we come upon an open space. 
It is perhaps two hundred yards wide. 
Look across ! At the farther side you 
see first a row of abatis — trees felled 
with their branches pointing outward 
and toward you, trimmed to sharpened 
points, and if you could examine closely 
you would find many fiendish " foot- 
locks " cunningly made to catch and 
trip any one trying to force his way 
through this savage fence. Beyond the 
abatis and above it rises a yellow earth- 
work, the top laid in logs, with the top- 
most log raised a few inches so that the 
defenders can fire through without ex- 
posing themselves. Here and there 
you see the muzzles of cannon gaping 
through embrasures, arranged in angles 
to sweep the open field with flank fire. 
The horrible, the hopeless task of the 
Jersey Brigade, with the Fifteenth regi- 



248 Sacrifice 

ment in the lead, is to capture that 
earthwork. The attempt seems hope- 
less, but attack, attack everywhere is the 
word to-day ; no joint in the enemy's 
harness must be left unsmitten. Spott- 
sylvania was not a place where only 
easy things were tried. 

It is ten o'clock now, and within and 
around the Bloody Angle, at every 
point but this, an inferno of strife is 
roaring. The order comes, the regi- 
ment forces its way through the pine 
thicket, straightens its line as it emerges, 
and the earthwork bursts into flame. 
A bold dash now across the shot-swept 
open, no firing, the bayonet only, and 
with thinned ranks the abatis is 
reached. To men who march to death 
it is less formidable than it seems, des- 
perate hands quickly tear it aside ; up 
now Fifteenth, what is left of you, up 
the bank over the logs, inside and hand 
to hand, foot to foot in deadly melee 



Sacrifice 249 

It is often said that the bayonet was 
a mere appendage in our war. But it 
was freely used at the Bloody Angle. 
The Fifteenth forced their way into that 
earthwork at the bayonet's point, held 
their costly capture for a short space, 
took about a hundred prisoners and a 
battle-flag. But too few of them were 
left to stand against the gathering force 
poured in on the little band from the 
inner line, and a battery is now sweep- 
ing down the brigade with flank fire 
of grape-shot. The order comes to 
retire. It is almost as perilous as the 
going in, and when the regiment is re- 
formed less than a hundred can be 
counted. But at nightfall others who 
have remained all day among the dead 
and wounded, entrapped as it were, 
creep in, and at roll-call next morn- 
ing it is found that one hundred and 
fifty-three men and four line oflicers 
remain, out of the four hundred and 



250 Sacrifice 

forty-four who marched into the Wil- 
derness ! The muster-out roll of that 
regiment carries the names of one 
hundred and twenty-two men who 
were killed or died of their wounds 
in those eight days of battle. And one 
hundred and sixteen of them met their 
death at Spottsylvania. The heroic 
chaplain of the regiment says of their 
last assault : — 

" We were engaged a single half 
hour, but there are times when minutes 
exceed in their awful bearing the weeks 
and years of ordinary existence. Forty 
bodies, or nearly one-fifth of the whole 
regiment, lay on [the breastwork, in the 
ditch, or in the open space in front. 
Numbers had crept away to expire in 
the woods, and others were carried to 
the hospital, there to have their suffer- 
ings prolonged for a few more days 
and then to yield their breath. The 
brave, the generous, the good lay 



Sacrifice 251 

slaughtered on the ground of our 
charge — the most precious gifts of 
our State to the sacred cause of our 
country/' 

In his " History of the Second Army 
Corps," General Walker says of the 
havoc made in that splendid organisa- 
tion by the first few months of the 
last Virginia campaign : — 

** More than twenty officers had been 
killed or wounded in command of bri- 
gades; nearly one hundred in command 
of regiments; nearly seventeen thou- 
sand men had fallen under the fire of 
the enemy, and among these was an un- 
due proportion of the choicest spirits. 
It was the bravest captain, the bravest 
Serjeant, the bravest private who went 
farthest and stood longest under fire." 

That was always the story, true not 
once but many times, and in spirit if 
not in precise detail of all the battle- 
wasted corps of our army. As the 



252 Sacrifice 

living image of those choice spirits 
comes back to memory, — and some of 
them were my dear friends, — a signifi- 
cant picture weaves past and present to- 
gether in imagination. Shadowy forms 
begin to shape themselves: they are 
phantoms of men in mature vigour, 
fitter than most of us who survive, and 
readier to go farthest and stay longest 
under the fire of that unending battle 
by which all true progress of our na- 
tional life must be conquered. And 
then the picture slowly fades until only 
a great vacancy is left ! 

For no one need tell us who knew 
these men that theirs was but brute 
courage, only the product of military 
discipline. Seldom has conscience been 
so large a factor in war, Anglo-Saxon 
conscience at that, which strikes hard 
and gives all. The ghastly losses were 
no accident. 

Was the sacrifice worth while? We 



Sacrifice 253 

are far enough away from it now to 
look back calmly and answer solemnly, 
Yes! 

There is a keeping of life that is its 
loss, and a giving of it that is largest, 
truest gain. The one great inconsis- 
tency of our Republic was wiped away, 
as alone it could be, in blood; one 
single dangerously-dividing controversy 
was forever settled by that war. The 
pledge of our nation's indivisibility is 
the precious possession of those myriad 
graves, and the harbinger of our grow- 
ingly beneficent greatness among the 
nations of the earth is the power of 
sacrifice for high principle, to which 
they bear their silent, their pathetic, but 
ever-present testimony. 



• -I? 



